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The week of January 16, as government, teacher and school board representatives discussed a potential framework agreement on funding and workforce stability, media reports speculating on the outcome of the meetings emerged, possibly jeopardizing a successful resolution.
The Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) has participated in tripartite discussions with the Government of Alberta and the Alberta School Boards Association (ASBA) since fall 2011. On January 9, Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk, wanting to conclude the talks before the provincial budget is tabled February 9, appointed two lawyers to work on a solution and to report to him on the progress. Lukaszuk said pressure is building to determine education costs in order to obtain stable and long-term funding commitments from the Treasury Board for the provincial budget.
“If they don’t come to a deal and they don’t tell me what the cost to the system is, then I will have to decide for them,” he said. “I would rather request what the cost truly is rather than me mandating what I think the cost should be.”
On January 16, the Calgary Herald reported on unconfirmed terms for settlement. Dubbing the talks “secret” discussions between the ATA and the government, the Herald article cited two school board representatives speculating on the effect of provisions related to teacher workload.
Ken Checkel, chair of the Clearview School Division, suggested that the talks were happening without the involvement of school boards and should be held in public.
Both Lukaszuk and ATA President Carol Henderson expressed concern that school board officials had spoken publicly about the confidential discussions.
Henderson disputed Checkel’s assertions. “There is a difference between secret and private,” she said. “School boards knew about the talks, teachers have been informed and the public has known about them through media reports—including one story by the same reporter in the Herald two months earlier. ASBA has represented boards at the table throughout the process.”
While Henderson would not comment on the specifics of the discussions, she acknowledged that teachers’ workload is an issue. "Teachers are suffering from increasing demands related to new board initiatives and excessive and unnecessary bureaucratic expectations," explained Henderson. “Boards need to take responsibility for how these out-of-classroom burdens are affecting workload and starting to affect teachers’ important work in the classroom.”
Lukaszuk has said that student instructional time is not open for discussion. “I will never negotiate the face time that students have with teachers," he said. "I have been very clear that I will not agree to anything that could in any way diminish the quality of education that kids receive.”
Henderson points out that teacher workloads could be contained without reducing student access to instruction. “For many teachers, it is the addition of new assignable duties that is eating into the time available for marking and lesson planning, let alone living life.”
