The Prince George District Teachers’ Association is sounding the alarm bells over the NDP’s tactic to possibly undo contract language on class size and composition.
The current agreement between the government and the BC Teachers Federation expires on June 30th, less than three years after the BCTF won a landmark decision on class size and composition in the Supreme Court of Canada back in 2016.
President, Joanne Hapke told MyNechakoValleyNow.com even though learning conditions for students are better than what they were, it’s still not enough.
“They are getting more needs met than what they were in October of 2016 but it’s not enough, there are a lot of needs within our school system and each year it gets worse. When you look at sixteen years of underfunding and a lack of support for students, there are a lot of struggling students.”
“It is concerning that this is even being considered, we should be looking at increasing these levels of support so that all levels of support so that all students get every need met.”
She adds at the very least, the current support levels should be kept where they are.
“The teachers that are in the classrooms now are seeing the difference in support levels for students and we are there to instruct them and meet the needs for their success and if those supports are gone it will be much more difficult for students.”
One of the proposals on the table by the province is to have an average number of support teachers in the district without all of the guaranteed levels of support in every school.
“What the proposal is one support teacher for every 95 students and if that we’re the case moving forward, the school would only have to staff two support teachers and the chance that we could lose all teacher librarians again is very likely, the chance that we lose councillors out of our elementary schools is very likely.”
Hapke adds, for the most part, Prince George has superior ratios in most levels of all the support teachers.
The district averages in PG look like this:
- One Teacher/Librarian for every 593 students
- One Councillor for every 693 students
- One Learning Assistance Teacher for every 404 students
- One Special Education Resource Teacher for every 266 students
- One English Language Learning Teacher for every 44.4 students
Those resources are currently guaranteed at every local school under the current agreement according to Hapke.
The BCTF and the BC Public School Employers’ Association returned to the bargaining table earlier this week.
Hapke doesn’t anticipate the 2019-20 school year to be negatively impacted by negotiations once students return from summer vacation in September.