B.C. teachers will vote next week on whether to accept a three-year contract settlement offer.
Results of the April 28-30 online vote for 40,000 active members of the B.C. Teachers Federation won’t be released until May 1.
The BCTF has recommended ratification and the offer is also being endorsed by the Prince George District Teachers Federation, which represents about 1,000 teachers in kindergarten-Grade 12 schools.
Terms of the settlement remain confidential but PGDTA president Joanne Hapke said it does fall within the B.C. provincial public sector mandate which caps annual pay increases at two per cent annually. Teachers have been working without a contract since June 2019.
“There were some improvements for our recruitment and retention,” said Hapke. “There were no concessions, so whatever our local language (in the expired contract) was for class size or composition, that remains. We don’t have composition language within our district but we do have better language than the province does around learning assistance teachers and ELL (English Language Learners) teachers, so we have great ratios and those will remain.
“Our staffing will remain static and we’re not looking at any layoffs for next year.”
The settlement reached March 27 between the BCTF and the B.C. Public School Employers’ Association ended a round of bargaining that started a year ago.
“Not all people in Prince George wanted to go on strike and we’ve been delivering that message to the BCTF since September 2018 and they were really cognizant of that and all the other locals who delivered the same message,” said Hapke. “Still, the BCTF bargaining team still went after the best deal they could get for all teachers and they believe they received it.”
There still exists a provincewide teacher shortage and Hapke says the COVID-19 crisis and travel restrictions associated with the pandemic will only make it more difficult to attract qualified teachers from other provinces.
Hapke said teachers are still experimenting with online teaching as they head into their fourth week of dealing with the fact schools are closed to students and there is no face-to-face teaching. Some have had difficulty utilizing virtual classroom technology and reaching students who don’t have suitable home computers or lack high-speed internet connections needed to make the software work for them. Across the province, about 25,000 students are using laptops or iPads that have been loaned to them by their schools.
“I do know that all the teachers are putting in more time than if we were in regular instruction,” said Hapke. “They’re trying to learn all the new online formats and trying to connect to the children through phone and email. They’re finding out and learning new platforms so that they can work with the children more effectively.
“Everyone is in a different stage here, based on their own situation, and the teachers are trying to do the best they can within the system,” she said. “It’s a reduced curriculum, it has to be, because if we’re not able deliver it on-site to the students directly we’re leaving a lot of the work to their guardians and caregivers and that is difficult because the parents are working themselves. Or they have multiple children and they’re trying to do the best they can for each of their children.”
Hapke has been acclaimed for her fourth year as PGDTA president, as have first vice-president Daryl Beauregard and second vice-president Katherine Trepanier. The other positions on the 14-member executive will be determined in a separate online vote next week.
