How Alberta teachers' strike may sway school board trustee election
Episode Stats
Summary
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.
Transcript
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In September, the Albertist Teachers Association is predicted to strike,
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and in the following month of October, Alberta's municipal elections are happening.
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So, how are they connected? Well, school board trustees are also chosen during the elections,
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which have a very significant impact on how school boards are run. Jeff Park,
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Executive Director of Alberta's Parents' Union, tells us why trustees are important and why voters,
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particularly parents, should care. I think it's very likely that the
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strike or the potential for the strike is very likely to be the ballot question in the school
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board election. School boards are the responsible parties for class sizes and classroom conditions,
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which is what those two issues are, what the frontline teachers are telling us,
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are the reasons that they feel a strike is necessary, why they rejected the mediators'
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recommendations that were given back in the spring. There just isn't that much you can do at the
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provincial level. You can always spend more money, but we had the Alberta class size initiative,
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the progressive conservatives brought it in, it continued under the NDP,
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the United Conservative Party even continued it for a short time. And all that we accomplished there
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was that we spent $3.4 billion on class size reductions while class sizes went up. But even
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while the total student population was going down and we were spending $3.4 billion on it,
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because we couldn't get school boards to do their jobs, frankly, and make sure that class sizes and
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classroom composition, classroom complexity was taken care of at the local level, it was just
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a straight waste of money. There's no indication that that money accomplished anything. So if all you
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can do at the provincial level is throw money at it, and the real answers have to come at the local
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level, then people should make the strike or the reasons for the strike, rather, one of the main things
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they're voting on at the local level. I'm afraid, though, that people might take an overly simplistic
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view and go, okay, we'll just elect school board candidates that whine the loudest for more money.
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Well, that's not an issue. Look, we've got almost every school board in the province spending more money
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on central office management employees and less money on classroom employees, especially education
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assistants. As an example of poor school board policies, Park also discusses a student case
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he believes could lead to an even bigger issue in Alberta schools. So the Mohanta family placed here,
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he's 11 years old, he has level three, which is the highest level of autism. And, and he, and so they put
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him in the Pine Ridge School, because it had small classes, only eight kids, all of whom were also special
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needs. And, and, and, and he had, you know, a lot of extra attention. And it was it was a great situation
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for him. To the best of their knowledge, that was that was how it had been, you know, one day goes to
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the school, completely happy and healthy comes home with bite marks bruises, some pretty vicious wounds
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on him. And, and he's completely traumatized. A doctor examines him and says, it was impossible
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that it was self inflicted. The doctor says the location, I mean, there's a bite mark on the neck,
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it was impossible for that to have been self inflicted. No one has attempted to refute that,
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that, that this is not a violent child who's going to be getting in violent altercations with teachers
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and students or anything like that. And because he's one of the largest children in the school,
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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
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so because he's going to be one of the larger students in the school, it's almost certainly
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an adult that these wounds. And so initially, so they, they rush him to the doctor, they get this
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opinion. They look for clarity from the school initially, heard absolutely nothing. The school
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told them absolutely nothing. Then they pressed obviously more and more. And, and then heard
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that no one had seen anything, there'd been no reported incidents. Much later, they were told
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that a education assistant actually had seen the wounds and between 1030 and 11am on the day in
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question, had reported it to a teacher, but no one had informed the Mohantas. Then also the bus driver
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and the education assistant on the bus told the parents that there was a recording device on the
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bus, and they could check and, and see. I mean, the bus driver and the EA said, it didn't happen on the
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way into school, but there's a recording device, you can go look, you know, give yourself peace of mind.
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So they requested the recording, and they were told that there was no recording, there was no recording
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device. And they were told that there must have been some sort of a language barrier that, that
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had pulled them into believing that there was. And then it's even more unlikely that there could be a
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language barrier, because they were actually speaking to the bus driver in Hindi. The bus driver also speaks
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Hindi. They had the conversation in Hindi. They had a conversation with the education assistant in
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English. Their English was excellent. There's no possibility of a language, like language barrier was
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the absolute worst excuse you could have come up with in this situation. But that was the excuse
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that the school board did. And, and so anyway, they advanced this and advanced this and advanced this
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until the, the Calgary Board of Education is forced to conduct an investigation. And they,
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of course, investigate themselves and find that they did. And they say that there was that there was
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sufficient that, that no one, no one at the school knows what happened, but that there was sufficient
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supervision the entire time. Well, one of those can't be true, right? Like, either, either you did not
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supervise him, and therefore no one saw anything, or he was being supervised. And therefore someone saw
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something. This is, this is the kind of thing that if big school divisions, like the Calgary Board of
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Education can't get a handle on, this is the kind of thing that is going to become a more and more and
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more common outcome, we're gonna have more and more kids drastically hurt. And God forbid, we're gonna
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have one of these kids die, like has happened in Ontario or Manitoba. If, if we don't get our act
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together and start and start making sure that school boards are taking responsibility, they have the
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proper, they have the proper policies, the proper staffing, whatever they need to have, they have it
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in place so that children aren't being badly harmed at school without the knowledge of their parents. No
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child should be harmed at school and parents shouldn't be kept in the dark about what happens at school.