B.C. to hire more than 1,000 teachers in interim BCTF deal
An extra $50 million for second term restores one-third of teachers required by high court
More than 1,000 teachers will be hired in B.C. starting this month, as part of a $50-million interim deal to partly address the recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling on classroom conditions.
In Surrey alone, where about 11-12 per cent of B.C. students go to school, it will mean between 100 and 150 more teachers and funding of about $5.5 million this year.
The deal restores about one-third of the teachers necessary to fully implement the ruling — which B.C. Teachers’ Federation president Glen Hansman estimates would cost a total of about $300 million. The $50-million interim deal is for the second half of this school year, so represents about $100 million on an annual basis.
November’s Supreme Court ruling restored class-size, class-composition and specialist teacher language that was deleted from teachers’ contracts in 2002.
“This is new funding, added to this year’s budget for education that will be included in our February budget in the Ministry of Education,” said education minister Mike Bernier.
“This will be new money and ongoing funds for school districts around the province. And this is just the preliminary first steps of negotiations.”
Bernier said neither side wanted to wait until a final deal was reached — which could take months — when at least some money could be put into the system to benefit classrooms immediately.
“This new funding will help to kick-start the changes we all know are required following the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision,” he said. “While the positive negotiations continue, we’re going to keep focused on solutions that work for kids in their classrooms.”
Hansman said teachers welcome the deal, but that more work needs to be done to come up with a final deal.
“This means more teachers in classrooms and schools this month, which is what we’ve been talking about since this decision came down on Nov. 10,” Hansman said. “While the new funding announced today is badly needed and will help many teachers and students, the government will have to provide — to be clear — significantly more funding to meet the requirements of the Supreme Court of Canada’s ruling.”
Hansman said talks are scheduled for next week and he would like to have a final deal ironed out before the government’s budget announcement in February. Bernier called the negotiations incredibly complex and predicted “it’s going to be quite a few more months of negotiations to try to work through all those wording aspects.”
The government currently spends $5.1 billion annually on education. Exactly how much money will be given to each school district from the $50 million will be based on an internal formula agreed upon by all districts that is mostly based on the number of students, Bernier said.
The actual number and types of teachers who will be hired will be determined by local committees involving school districts and the BCTF.
The types of teachers could include classroom teachers, as well as special education, speech language pathologists, behaviour interventions specialists, school psychologists, aboriginal support teachers, mental health counsellors, teacher librarians and others.
The interim deal, and progress on negotiations for a final settlement, comes just four months before a provincial election in which public anger over education funding, school closures and crowded classrooms could be a key issue.
The NDP’s education critic Rob Fleming cast Premier Christy Clark as the architect of almost 15 years of classroom underfunding, pointing out she was education minister when government first unconstitutionally stripped teachers of bargaining rights in 2002, and premier during the second attempt in 2012. He said the $50 million is a “good thing” but only a down payment on years of classroom cutbacks.
“What British Columbia parents and people of this province understand is the government was forced to do this by the Supreme Court of Canada,” said Fleming.