The Prince George and District Teachers Association is recommending its members vote in favour of a tentative deal to implement last year's Supreme Court of Canada ruling restoring classroom conditions, president Richard Giroday said Monday.
Voting will be held Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week. Giroday said teachers will be meeting Wednesday evening to go through the 12-page agreement with help from B.C. Teachers' Federation first vice president Teri Mooring.
"We will actually be going through it in quite a bit of detail," Giroday said. "I know I had a session for about an hour and a half on Sunday afternoon where we were able to ask questions, the local presidents from across the province, and it was very good for me."
At least 2,000 more teachers will be hired if the agreement is ratified, according to The Vancouver Sun.
It would fully restore all of the teachers' contract language deleted by provincial legislation in 2002. Changes to class-size, class-composition and the number of specialist teachers are to be implemented for the next school year.
All 60 school districts have different contract language about class size, class composition and specialist teacher ratios. If districts had superior language in place than what is provincially now mandated, the district language will supersede the provincial language.
An interim deal reached in January gave School District 57 $1.26-million, enough to hire nearly 30 more teachers for the remainder of the school year.
- with files from Tracy Sherlock, Vancouver Sun
