By Carol Baldwin, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter with the Wakaw Recorder
“This vote tells students, families, and our Teachers’ Bargaining Committee that teachers are deeply committed to securing a sustainable future for publicly funded schools and for the supports our students desperately need in classrooms,” says STF President Samantha Becotte. “We need a deal that guarantees the government’s full, unwavering commitment to the future of public schools beyond the election cycle. Anything less is untenable,” says Becotte. “We are now a year into this process, having opened negotiations last May. We are nearing the end of a school year spent under the shadow of an intransigent government that seems to disregard the largest job sanctions ever undertaken by Saskatchewan teachers and ignore students’ needs. No more backroom deals and no more ‘final offers.’ School divisions are finalizing their budgets for next year and they’re indicating that funding is still grossly insufficient. The students, families, and teachers of Saskatchewan need real commitments to improve experiences in classrooms and solutions to address the challenges in education.” Ninety percent of teachers rejected the offer in voting held on May 8th and 9th.
Cockrill said Wednesday, May 8th, that job action in recent months has resulted in less instructional time and students deserve quality education. He said nobody wants a longer school year, but he has ministerial powers to make adjustments to the calendar if needed. Becotte noted that two school divisions have seen five days’ worth of instructional time eaten up by job action, while others were less. It is unclear how an extension of the instructional year for all schools would be made equitable given the circumstances. “Yes, we have had sanctions that have affected instructional time, but we’ve also had school years where there have been more snow days [ and the school year was not extended in those instances].”
In an emailed statement to CTV, Minister of Education, Jeremy Cockrill, said he was disappointed with the results of the vote adding, “The best deal will be reached at the bargaining table, and both sides should immediately agree to return to the table and avoid any further sanctions that could jeopardize instructional time and important milestone events for Saskatchewan students.”
According to a press release on May 9th, the Teachers’ Bargaining Committee have extended an invitation to the Government-Trustee Bargaining Committee to return to the negotiating table with a new mandate on May 13 and 14. In anticipation that the GTBC will accept the invitation and return to the bargaining table, the STF will not immediately recommence sanctions. In an interview aired on CTV Morning Live Saskatchewan on Friday morning, Becotte shared that over the last week, in online town hall meetings, teachers have been engaged and the 92.2 percent turnout of voters reflects that.
The Minister has claimed that the STF has been silencing teachers and this vote shows how unified the teachers in the province are. Teachers’ messages are Becotte’s messages to the government. The engagement of teachers, Becotte said, is higher than she has ever seen it during her time with the STF.
There are ways to avoid sanctions. It does not have to be this hard in Saskatchewan, complexity has been addressed in other collective agreements and the fear that teachers want to ‘take control’ could not be further from the truth Becotte assured. School boards have no control over the funding they receive to run the schools in the province and teachers just want to ensure that the funding schools receive can meet the needs of the students in their classrooms.
This is a decades long issues that will not be solved in one contract, but the conversation needs to begin, the issues need to start being addressed. The decade of underfunding, Becotte stated, has impacted students and families more than any of the sanctions taken in the past five months and has left a generation of students at a disadvantage when compared to students in other provinces. Contract negotiation between the STF and the GTBC started in May 2023 but came to a head in January when teachers began engaging in job sanctions and demanding better from the GTBC. The vote held this week shows that educators are standing firm in their demands for better working conditions and support for the education system.
Minister Cockrill is quoted by the Canadian Press as describing the offer as a “fair agreement that was negotiated between the government, school divisions and STF.” In an interview with CKOM’s Evan Bray, Friday morning, the Minister continued to state that the offer the teachers voted on was one that was “agreed upon” by both parties at the table and that agreeing to take the offer to the membership for a vote was, in essence, agreeing to the offer itself. The Minister further implied that the leadership of the STF was using language that was misleading, a charge that teachers have been making against the government since the infamous billboard campaign the government launched in July of last year.
“There is no doubt that even through the work-to-rule sanctions, instructional time has been affected in several divisions…,” the Minister stated. It is interesting that by only doing the work that is outlined in the Education Act and refusing to do that work outside of the designated hours of work, is seen as having an effect on instructional time.
The STF has again stated their willingness to be involved in binding arbitration. CKOM host Evan Bray asked the Minister if binding arbitration is a possibility, to which the response was a non-committal, “We will explore those options if needed.”