Teachers, schools at odds on blame
The B.C. Teachers’ Federation has criticized the Greater Victoria school district for blaming current staff shortages on a 2016 Supreme Court of Canada decision that led to smaller class sizes.
BCTF president Glen Hansman said district managers should have foreseen the need to hire more people and have nobody to blame for the shortages but themselves.
“This is about their own decisions around hiring,” Hansman said in an interview.
He was responding to comments by associate superintendent Colin Roberts in a Times Colonist story about students with special needs being asked to miss school due to a lack of educational assistants.
Roberts said the educational assistant shortage stems in part from the Supreme Court of Canada decision that restored teachers’ contract language regarding class size and composition.
“It created many additional classrooms requiring many additional teachers, then the increase in the number of classrooms also corresponded with that need to hire a significant number of EAs,” Robert said
“We’ve been hiring as quickly as we can. It is a struggle for us to keep pace and to find enough qualified people.”
Hansman called Roberts’ comments “offensive” and untrue. In a letter to the district, released to the Times Colonist, Hansman said such remarks “present a false narrative and blame the courts and collective agreements for decisions and practices made solely by management in the school district.”
Hansman said the district would have known about the court decision in November 2016 and should have recognized then the need to start hiring.
He also accused the district of failing to take full advantage of provincial money that was available to hire people.
“Most school districts utilized their full share of the Priority Measures Fund during the spring of 2017, but the Greater Victoria School District did not — failing to spend $353,990 of the $1,671,867 it was given,” the letter states.
In addition, Hansman said the district disclosed during a recent arbitration that it returned nearly $2.6 million from the Classroom Improvement Fund to the province in June 2018 rather than spend it on direct services to students.
“So this is a school district that has not utilized all the money that it could have — that it got from the province to hire people,” Hansman said in an interview. “I don’t know if they’re letting parents know that or even the trustees, but they forfeited a couple million dollars that they could have been spending on staffing. So they need to be looking in the mirror.”
District secretary-treasurer Mark Walsh said BCTF’s position is “not accurate.”
In regard to the Priority Measures Fund, he said the district consulted with the Greater Victoria Teachers’ Association on how the money would be spent.
“Ultimately, due to hiring lags and a lower average teacher salary, there was money left over,” he said. “We actually sat down again with the union and agreed how the remaining dollars would be spent in 2018, which they were.”
The Classroom Enhancement Fund issue can also be explained, Walsh said. “In 2018 the district was required to submit a budget for the restored class size and composition language,” he said.
“We ensured that we budgeted for the maximum cost, including time for teachers to prep to assist with students with diverse learning needs, time to provide remedy for teachers with over two students with designations in their class, and average teacher salary.”
But the preparation time and the remedy provision have not been fully used, Walsh said. “The remedy amount is still subject to discussions between the union and the district.”
Also a factor was that average teacher salaries were less than budgeted, he said.
“The district used its best efforts to hire as many teachers [as possible] to fill positions and spend all the monies we were entitled to spend,” Walsh said. “The funds in 2018 could not be used for education assistants.”