Teachers fight back at Liberal doorstep

Teachers who voted against Liberal candidates got little satisfaction on election night.

A Stephen McNeil majority government will continue on the path set out last fall by way of imposing a contract and consulting on classroom conditions after the fact.

With Tuesday’s election results, classroom conditions will continue to be examined with an added elective subject: school board administration.

“(It) will be the early focus of the new mandate,” said Leif Helmer of the N.S. Small Schools Initiative, which supports a rural education policy he says many provinces – but not Nova Scotia – already have.

During the election campaign, McNeil stopped short of promising to consolidate or reform school boards, softening the party’s approach from their April 2016 resolution to have just one English school board. The French school board, Conseil Scolaire Acadien Provincial would also exist.

Both opposition parties signalled this month they would also review administration and school closure process as a priority in response to recent board decisions in a number of jurisdictions.

“All the parties have recognized that the community voice is not always, nor often heard with the current model,” he said to the Chronicle Herald.

“Burrill and Baillie have both made important commitments to keep rural schools open, either via moratorium or legislating new tools for the department to take back some of the power from CEOs of governing boards,” said Helmer.

“This would be an excellent time to remove board office staff from the NSTU, especially the CEOs of the boards,” he said.

Helmer also thinks the rollout of 30 more pre-primary programs for four year-olds pledged in last month’s budget will be a major change for education.

“It will give a one-time boost to school enrolment numbers, and add better-paid, pensioned jobs for early childhood educators who will join NSTU.

However, it could also mean better job security for existing elementary teachers, according to Paul Bennett of Schoolhouse Consulting.

He recently predicted that within a decade approximately 9,125 less students would be entering the public school system.

Bennett also thought taxpayers would have been hit hard had the result been a minority government, forcing the government to revisit Bill 75, the teachers’ labour bill.

Bennett said he reckons that had the Conservatives been left holding the balance of power, that they’d find a way to leave the bill alone.

“I think we would see Jamie Baillie backing down from his position (to repeal it),” said Bennett in an interview on Tuesday.