Western Standard - How Alberta teachers' strike may sway school board trustee election

In September, the Alberta Teachers Association is predicted to strike, and in the month of October, municipal elections are happening. How are they connected? Well, School Board trustees are also chosen during the elections, which have a very significant impact on how school boards are run. Jeff Park, Executive Director of Alberta's Parents Union, tells us why trustees are important, and why voters, particularly parents, should care.

00:00:00.880 In September, the Albertist Teachers Association is predicted to strike,

00:00:05.120 and in the following month of October, Alberta's municipal elections are happening.

00:00:10.240 So, how are they connected? Well, school board trustees are also chosen during the elections,

00:00:16.080 which have a very significant impact on how school boards are run. Jeff Park,

00:00:20.720 Executive Director of Alberta's Parents' Union, tells us why trustees are important and why voters,

00:00:26.880 particularly parents, should care. I think it's very likely that the

00:00:34.240 strike or the potential for the strike is very likely to be the ballot question in the school

00:00:40.960 board election. School boards are the responsible parties for class sizes and classroom conditions,

00:00:47.600 which is what those two issues are, what the frontline teachers are telling us,

00:00:53.440 are the reasons that they feel a strike is necessary, why they rejected the mediators'

00:00:59.280 recommendations that were given back in the spring. There just isn't that much you can do at the

00:01:06.160 provincial level. You can always spend more money, but we had the Alberta class size initiative,

00:01:13.120 the progressive conservatives brought it in, it continued under the NDP,

00:01:16.640 the United Conservative Party even continued it for a short time. And all that we accomplished there

00:01:24.480 was that we spent $3.4 billion on class size reductions while class sizes went up. But even

00:01:31.600 while the total student population was going down and we were spending $3.4 billion on it,

00:01:37.360 because we couldn't get school boards to do their jobs, frankly, and make sure that class sizes and

00:01:42.560 classroom composition, classroom complexity was taken care of at the local level, it was just

00:01:49.680 a straight waste of money. There's no indication that that money accomplished anything. So if all you

00:01:58.400 can do at the provincial level is throw money at it, and the real answers have to come at the local

00:02:03.040 level, then people should make the strike or the reasons for the strike, rather, one of the main things

00:02:09.120 they're voting on at the local level. I'm afraid, though, that people might take an overly simplistic

00:02:18.800 view and go, okay, we'll just elect school board candidates that whine the loudest for more money. 0.58

00:02:25.360 Well, that's not an issue. Look, we've got almost every school board in the province spending more money

00:02:35.040 on central office management employees and less money on classroom employees, especially education

00:02:42.240 assistants. As an example of poor school board policies, Park also discusses a student case

00:02:49.280 he believes could lead to an even bigger issue in Alberta schools. So the Mohanta family placed here, 1.00

00:02:56.880 he's 11 years old, he has level three, which is the highest level of autism. And, and he, and so they put

00:03:10.640 him in the Pine Ridge School, because it had small classes, only eight kids, all of whom were also special

00:03:18.960 needs. And, and, and, and he had, you know, a lot of extra attention. And it was it was a great situation

00:03:30.640 for him. To the best of their knowledge, that was that was how it had been, you know, one day goes to

00:03:37.840 the school, completely happy and healthy comes home with bite marks bruises, some pretty vicious wounds

00:03:45.680 on him. And, and he's completely traumatized. A doctor examines him and says, it was impossible

00:03:55.760 that it was self inflicted. The doctor says the location, I mean, there's a bite mark on the neck,

00:04:00.960 it was impossible for that to have been self inflicted. No one has attempted to refute that,

00:04:06.400 that, that this is not a violent child who's going to be getting in violent altercations with teachers

00:04:12.640 and students or anything like that. And because he's one of the largest children in the school,

00:04:19.520 it's a it only goes up to grade six, I think, and he's in grade five, and, and he's a larger kid. And

00:04:30.480 so because he's going to be one of the larger students in the school, it's almost certainly

00:04:34.800 an adult that these wounds. And so initially, so they, they rush him to the doctor, they get this

00:04:46.080 opinion. They look for clarity from the school initially, heard absolutely nothing. The school

00:04:54.960 told them absolutely nothing. Then they pressed obviously more and more. And, and then heard

00:05:01.600 that no one had seen anything, there'd been no reported incidents. Much later, they were told

00:05:08.960 that a education assistant actually had seen the wounds and between 1030 and 11am on the day in

00:05:16.560 question, had reported it to a teacher, but no one had informed the Mohantas. Then also the bus driver

00:05:24.240 and the education assistant on the bus told the parents that there was a recording device on the

00:05:31.440 bus, and they could check and, and see. I mean, the bus driver and the EA said, it didn't happen on the

00:05:38.720 way into school, but there's a recording device, you can go look, you know, give yourself peace of mind.

00:05:46.400 So they requested the recording, and they were told that there was no recording, there was no recording

00:05:55.120 device. And they were told that there must have been some sort of a language barrier that, that

00:06:01.920 had pulled them into believing that there was. And then it's even more unlikely that there could be a

00:06:07.680 language barrier, because they were actually speaking to the bus driver in Hindi. The bus driver also speaks

00:06:13.120 Hindi. They had the conversation in Hindi. They had a conversation with the education assistant in

00:06:17.920 English. Their English was excellent. There's no possibility of a language, like language barrier was

00:06:23.920 the absolute worst excuse you could have come up with in this situation. But that was the excuse

00:06:28.880 that the school board did. And, and so anyway, they advanced this and advanced this and advanced this

00:06:35.040 until the, the Calgary Board of Education is forced to conduct an investigation. And they,

00:06:41.680 of course, investigate themselves and find that they did. And they say that there was that there was

00:06:52.240 sufficient that, that no one, no one at the school knows what happened, but that there was sufficient

00:07:01.840 supervision the entire time. Well, one of those can't be true, right? Like, either, either you did not

00:07:13.040 supervise him, and therefore no one saw anything, or he was being supervised. And therefore someone saw

00:07:21.440 something. This is, this is the kind of thing that if big school divisions, like the Calgary Board of

00:07:30.240 Education can't get a handle on, this is the kind of thing that is going to become a more and more and

00:07:35.360 more common outcome, we're gonna have more and more kids drastically hurt. And God forbid, we're gonna

00:07:42.320 have one of these kids die, like has happened in Ontario or Manitoba. If, if we don't get our act

00:07:49.200 together and start and start making sure that school boards are taking responsibility, they have the

00:07:56.400 proper, they have the proper policies, the proper staffing, whatever they need to have, they have it

00:08:02.560 in place so that children aren't being badly harmed at school without the knowledge of their parents. No

00:08:11.360 child should be harmed at school and parents shouldn't be kept in the dark about what happens at school.

00:08:19.200 so

Western Standard - August 15, 2025

How Alberta teachers' strike may sway school board trustee election

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