Wildrose vows to give school boards negotiating powers
Education funding boost also on radar
A Wildrose Party government would return to local school boards the power to negotiate teachers’ salaries, party leader Danielle Smith said Thursday.
Boards would also have greater authority to hire more teachers, said Smith as she unveiled Wildrose’s “commitment to parents on education” in Airdrie.
“The problem we have seen in the last five years is that the province took over teacher negotiations and then they negotiated a contract they couldn’t afford,” she told reporters.
“We want to return that local bargaining power so that we can have local school boards make decisions on contracts with teachers that are reflective of their needs in the local community.” However, Smith said Wildrose would not return school boards’ powers to set and collect property taxes, which were taken away by the Progressive Conservative government in 1994.
While school boards have the authority to bargain, it is the province that determines how much money they have to spend.
The government had been bargaining with the Alberta School Boards Association and the Alberta Teachers Association on a new contract for teachers to replace the current deal that expires on Aug. 31. However, the government had been hoping for a deal ahead of next week’s provincial budget and talks are no longer underway.
The contract hammered out by the government and ATA just ahead of the 2008 provincial election — and subsequently ratified by boards — has been controversial because of the large salary increases for teachers.
Health and education are expected to be major issues in the provincial election that is expected in April. Premier Alison Redford won the Tory leadership last fall in part through her promise to immediately restore $107 million in education funding that had been cut.
Smith, a trustee with the Calgary Board of Education when its membership was fired by the government in 1999 over infighting, also said Wildrose would boost provincial education funding though she said to what extent has not been determined. Wildrose will restrain spending in other ministries and try to find efficiencies within the education system to put more money directly into schools.
She also promised to allow more charter schools and to move away from provincial achievement tests to a new assessment model for students progress.
Tory Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk said much of what Wildrose is promising is vague, but it doesn’t square with the party’s mantra of fiscal responsibility.
He said it made little sense for the government, which controls the purse strings, not to be in the driver’s seat on salary negotiations.
“How would they ever have control over what school boards would negotiate? What if school boards negotiate very lucrative contracts? How will they be able to keep their commitment of finding efficiencies and cutting spending?” said Lukaszuk, who noted that about 30 per cent of the provincial budget already goes to education. School boards themselves have been mixed on the issue of local bargaining.
Bruce Foster, professor of policy studies at Mount Royal University, said the promise is a good fit with Wildrose’s libertarian/conservative instincts to favour local control.
Such an approach can lead to innovation and private initiative but also poses the danger of severe inequity among school divisions, he said.
The education pledge was the second of five commitments Wildrose is making to voters ahead of the election.