‘Undemocratic process’
Public forum set for Thursday, strike vote called for Tuesday
Things are starting to heat up again in the long-simmering dispute between the Nova Scotia Teachers Union (NSTU) and the provincial government.
On Thursday, the NSTU is planning a public forum to discuss the province’s plans to implement the recommendations of the recent Glaze report, with a local president labelling some of the items inflammatory for the union.
“It’s a very undemocratic process when you just decide the government is just going to remove people from a union or impose things on people that they really don’t want,” Dayna Enguehard, Cape Breton District local president, said in an interview Tuesday. “It seems to be an attack on teachers.” Not long after Enguehard and her peers across the province spoke to the media, the NSTU announced that it will hold a strike vote next Tuesday as it battles provincial education reforms including a revamp of the union’s membership.
In a statement late Tuesday, union president Liette Doucet says the move is necessary because the province’s education system is “once again under attack from the McNeil government.’’
Last month the province announced it intends to act on the recommendations outlined in the report by consultant Avis Glaze that are intended to improve the province’s education system. They include dissolving the seven elected Englishlanguage regional boards, removing principals and viceprincipals from the Nova Scotia Teachers Union and establishing a self-regulating college of educators.
The province announced it would move ahead with the recommendations only one day after the Glaze report was made public.
The NSTU has been highly critical of the minister’s acceptance of the recommendations.
For Thursday’s public forum, Enguehard said the NSTU has invited local MLAs, cabinet ministers, teachers as well as members of the public to come out and voice their opinions. Education Minister Zach Churchill has also been invited and he will be in Cape Breton on Thursday, but Enguehard said she doesn’t know whether he plans to attend. Candidates for the provincial Progressive Conservative leadership have also been invited.
Members of the public will also be able to speak.
“Parents, teachers, anybody who is concerned with education and they can ask questions and they can make statements, so it’s an open forum for people to discuss or ask questions,” Enguehard said.
In making the recommendations, Glaze noted the high number of acclamations among elected board members. There
have long been critics of principals being in the same union as teachers and having to deal with matters such as potential discipline.
Enguehard said the teachers believe none of the moves proposed by Glaze will do anything to improve classroom conditions for students and will only make the relationship between teachers and the McNeil government more combative.
“We have a very high rate of
poverty in Nova Scotia, we have a lot of special needs children — none of this is addressed,” Enguehard said.
Doucet says it is clear union members agree the situation is “dire’’ and that teachers and administrators need to “stand up for public education.’’
She says as a result the union executive approved the strike vote.
She says the move will give the union a mandate to implement
a job action if the government is unprepared to back down from implementing the Glaze report.
In Cape Breton, signatures are being collected on petitions to send to the minister. The forum will take place at the Holiday Inn in Sydney at p.m. Thursday. It is open to the public.