Union warns sanctions could return if province doesn’t return to negotiations

While the vote to turn down the deal was a slimmer margin with 55 per cent of teachers saying no, a different vote several weeks before on whether sanctions should be renewed for fall had overwhelming support at 95 per cent.

Becotte said the message is clear and they need an immediate return of negotiations, and the votes were just a matter of deciding where the negotiations would happen, not whether they were needed.

“We want to move this process forward without any delays, so if we don’t hear response from the DBC on a path forward to an agreement, then further sanction actions will be announced in short order. As always, we will provide 48-hour notice of any action,” she said.

The teachers have focused on guaranteed funding that addresses class size and complexity (levels of needs of students within a classroom) as a top negotiation point.

The province has said they will provide some funding but so far has refused to include it as a clause in the contract with teachers, instead opting to give it to school boards to allocate.

Teachers have pointed out that the province has done this in the past when it was an election year and then withdrawn the funding.

On Friday morning, Premier Scott Moe appeared on the Evan Bray radio show and said that the next step should be binding arbitration, a proposal the teachers made months ago, and the province rejected.

“That will get all of us to an agreement as soon as possible. It’s for certain the fastest way (and) the fairest way,” Moe said.

“I think it will provide that certainty for not only the rest of this school year, but into the future for our families across this province, for our students that are attending school, and for the teachers as well that are working and teaching our children.”

His comments were echoed by Education Minister Jeremy Cockrill who told battlefordsNOW that it may be the best path forward.

Cockrill said the government has made advancements in what it is willing to offer and he was not pleased with the result of the vote.

“Well, I think it’s disappointing and it’s disappointing because you know I would say government has made significant movement on virtually every area of the STF, has asked for it and certainly on compensation, certainly on classroom supports, safety in the classroom,” he said.

Becotte said a deal is possible if the province and school boards negotiate, something they saw in the last five days of talks, but not before that.

The tone changed in the days that produced the tentative deal the STF endorsed.

“Whether it’s around violence and aggression in schools and the issues and challenges with classroom complexity or the issues around recruitment and retention, some of those through the presentation of our information were dismissed or diminished a little bit in terms of the seriousness of each of those issues,” she said.

“But over the last five days that we have, there was a change in tone. It did really seem like the GBC (government bargaining committee) and the Members who were at the table wanted to get to an agreement and wanted to move, move the process forward.”

She also pointed out that classrooms across the province, whether in smaller schools or in larger urban areas, are dealing with the same issues.

Some rural or small-town schools have very large class sizes and the students in them can have very complex needs.

“So, it’s not always about the number of students in the class, but it’s about the needs of those students and ensuring that those needs are being met and, regardless of what classes look like or where students are in terms of their geographic location within the province, school divisions don’t have the resources that they need,” Becotte said.

With files from Julia Lovett-Squires and CKOM

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com

by Susan McNeil

Union warns sanctions could return if province doesn’t return to negotiations

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