Saskatchewan’s provincial government is trying to save face and to gain the upper hand at the same time as pretending to be a friend of education.
In an end-run around the collective bargaining process with the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation, the province came to a four-year funding agreement with the Saskatchewan School Boards Association (SSBA), and are now holding this over the heads of the teachers union.
Rather than solving anything, it’s making the waters murkier and creating bad blood between the province and the teachers, and it’s not bringing the ongoing labour dispute any closer to a resolution.
The funding news is good news, of course, even the STF have acknowledged that – but it’s lacking in certain guarantees, which the teachers have rightly pointed out need to be in place.
They want more discussions on this at the bargaining table, but will the government actually talk about it there? Since this agreement with the SSBA took place completely outside of the bargaining process, it’s not clear what the government will or will not talk about.
There’s also a strategy involved in announcing this ahead of budget day, which would’ve been the normal, proper channel for such an announcement.
According to the government’s news release, “It provides a minimum of $356.6 million per year for four years for classroom supports as well as increased investment into youth mental health resources.”
School districts have voiced “cautious optimism” about the funding, pointing out they won’t really know if it’s good news until the details come out in the budget, set to be brought down in the Legislature on March 20.
As for the STF, they want there to be guarantees that the money will be used in the classrooms, and not for other purposes. This is, of course, in the purview of the provincial government, as they can place a caveat on any funding to say what it should be used for.
Meantime, it is the students who are primarily paying the price for the ongoing job actions by the STF. When extra-curricular activities are cancelled, for example, it’s only the students who are hurt by that. It’s the same when the STF occasionally pulls their teachers out of the classroom for a full day, such as the attempt on March 4, the day after a major snowstorm hit the province.
Noon-hour supervision being pulled makes things inconvenient if arrangements can’t be made in time, but for the most part, schools have been able to adapt to this.
The bottom line to all of this is, the two sides need to get back to the bargaining table and end the dispute, and if the government wants a resolution, then make it possible for the negotiators to put everything on the table.
