Last year the supreme court ruled that the legislation stripping the teachers' contract was illegal and gave the government a year to rectify their actions.
So far employers have been telling the teachers that they now must give up, through negotiation, what was illegally taken away. Any items they wish to retain can only be kept by giving up something else within the financial framework. At all costs, there will be no more money put into the system. Students have lost many educational services through government cuts over the past decade.
Learning assistance for those who need a little help is close to extinct.
Teacher aid time for special needs students has been cut back more and more each year, and those students who are granted aid time often see their aids being siphoned off and shared out to deal with other needy students.
To become a teacher now takes six university years, and debt-burdened new graduates are lucky to get on a list to be called for substitute teaching or to attain even a part-time position. Experienced teachers tend to be stressed and suffering from burn-out due to the student needs they are unable to meet.
More and more parents are scraping up extra money to pay for tutors outside of the school. The minister of education claims that limiting the number of special needs children in a classroom is discriminatory.
Christy Clark trumpets that she is not going to raise taxes on families so teachers can have more money. The government is poised to end the BCTF job action through legislation (again) and impose a contract. At this time, just to get services back to 2001 levels would cost millions of dollars.
It has been truly depressing to see all the hard work of over fifty years of legal contract negotiations be ripped apart by those who show, by their actions, that they do not want a healthy public education system. It is a tragedy for those students who are being deprived of educational opportunities.
Funding education properly pays off in the long term. I am so happy to be retired and so
concerned for the future educational needs of our community's children.
E.J Eakin
Prince George
Retired teacher
