Minister coy on full funding for new contract

Minister coy with dispute in arbitration and no settlement expected for months

REGINA The Saskatchewan Party government is not committing to fully fund a new contract for the province’s teachers.

It is expected a new collective bargaining agreement for Saskatchewan’s 13,500 teachers, currently in arbitration, will be in place by September at the earliest.

Education Minister Gord Wyant is not committing to fully funding that agreement.

In March, the province provided $1.86 billion in education funding, a 1.6-per-cent increase from the previous year. However, given the province has offered other sectors, such as government employees and health-care workers, small pay increases in still-ongoing contract negotiations, it is conceivable the increase in education funding this year won’t be enough to cover a new, more expensive collective bargaining agreement for teachers.

Wyant said Thursday there was no line item in the budget for a new contract because the province did not want to “create any undue expectations with respect to what (a new contract) might look like.”

Once a new agreement is in place, Wyant said the province will “make a decision on how that’s going to be funded.”

NDP education critic Carla Beck said, “I was very surprised to hear the minister say he could not commit to that” because the expectation would be for the government to fund the contract it negotiated.

Shawn Davidson, president of the Saskatchewan School Boards Association (SSBA), recognizes the new contract is in arbitration and out of the government’s hands for now, saying “understandably it is difficult for school divisions to budget for, but let’s face it, both the government and school divisions are doing budgets right now.”

He remains hopeful the province will “find the operating dollars that school divisions need to meet our key cost-driving pressures that we will be facing in the next six months,” which includes increased enrolments as well as the new contract.

In 2016 , the province only covered half of the 1.9-per-cent increase it had negotiated with teachers under collective bargaining, forcing school boards to pay the outstanding dollars.

Adding stress to school divisions is the expectation enrolments are going to increase.

As of September 2017, school enrolment was 171,542 students. That number is expected to rise by 2,735 this September to 174,277.

Since being elected in 2007, the Saskatchewan Party government has seen enrolment increase by 9.8 per cent, while operational funding has increased 31 per cent. Operational funding this year is 1.3 per cent lower than 2016-17 levels, while enrolment has increased 2.32 per cent over the same period of time.

Thursday saw Wyant leave the door open to adding additional dollars to the operating budget come September, saying the government is “committed to looking at the enrolment projections for the fall and give consideration to see what additional school resources might be required for the school divisions in the fall.”

Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation president Pat Maze says the 1.6-per-cent increase given this year to the education operating budget doesn’t cover the cost of inflation, let alone the increase in enrolment seen in school divisions.

Maze said teachers have been “treated poorly ” by the government and that he is “quite skeptical” in Wyant’s suggestion further dollars could be coming in September.

“There’s not a lot of trust in the education sector right now,” he said.

Let’s face it, both the government and school divisions are doing budgets right now.