'Who's going to be working in those buildings?': ATA says investments needed in more than just new schools

Alberta Teachers’ Association President, Jason Schilling, discusses the provincial governement’s investments in school construction with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins.

 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

 

Michael Higgins: The organizer of an Edmonton rally has claimed parental rights are under threat. “As long as a teacher teaches the Alberta curriculum, they're okay, however, sometimes they add in extra things, and some of those things are making parents uncomfortable.”

How do you respond to a comment like that one from a protest that was essentially on the Alberta Teachers’ Association’s doorstep?

Jason Schilling: Everything that a teacher would teach in school is online. The curriculum is online, resources are vetted by government and school boards, and those are the materials that teachers use in their classrooms.

As I said that day, and I will say it again and again, if there is an issue that someone might have, phone the school, talk to the teacher, talk to the principal at that school, and just see where there might be a misunderstanding.

We are seeing right now, as we've seen for a while, a lot of misinformation and a lot of mistruth out there about what is happening in our schools, and the primary focus of teachers is to ensure that schools are safe, caring places for all students.

That includes 2SLGBTQ+ students and some of our students who are most marginalized and vulnerable. We have to ensure that those are safe spaces for them.

MH: That is a conversation teachers are willing to engage in. How do you approach that dynamic of speaking with a parent who has concerns over parental rights?

JS: There already are parental rights in the Education Act. Section 32 allows parents to opt out of instruction of certain topics.

Schools send notification home on that. This is already happening, it's a matter of people just contacting the school respectfully and in a way that engages in a conversation that is not going to be combative, to just ask questions. There's nothing wrong with doing that.

MH: What are you bracing for now when it comes to legislation being introduced in the fall sitting on a suite of policies around transgender youth applying to the school setting?

JS: Well, we'll have to see what the legislation says and just how different it will be from the announcement that we had from the premier earlier in the year.

A lot of questions about, for instance, around the opt-in portion for instruction around sexual identity.

We would have an opt-out version in the Education Act. So one of my questions is, what is the problem that we're trying to fix?

Because it's not been an issue in terms of being able to get people to opt-out of certain instruction.

We'll have to see what the legislation says and then we will move forward in terms of our advocacy after that.

MH: Could it actually end up being different? Because the way legislation is worded, you only find out when it's introduced?

JS: It could be different, and I don't know. So we'll have to see. We'll just have to see what happens when we see the legislation comes down.

MH: The government is right now, promising amendments to the Alberta Bill of Rights. Does that at all enter the radar from an education perspective?

Are there elements there, when that legislation is introduced, you'll be watching for?

JS: It’s not really on my radar right now. As I'm talking to my members, they're talking about the fact that their classes are larger than they've ever seen.

They don't have supports for students, that they don't have the resources available to meet the needs of their special needs students, that they're feeling burnt out over curriculum and these literacy and numeracy assessments.

Teachers are focused on what's happening with their students right now in front of them, and how they're struggling to meet their needs.

The Bill of Rights coming down the pike is not much on their radar right now.

MH: We've spoken in the past about the ATA’s position on the degree to which education is funded, and your contention is that it is underfunded.

So how much of a catch up is this accelerated school construction?

JS: The school construction is for bricks and mortar, it has nothing to do with people, and the underfunding that we're seeing within the education system is operational.

It has to do with how the funding affects our classrooms, the amount of teachers that we have working, EA’s who are working in the building and other professionals to support kids.

We have funding for new buildings but absent from that conversation was who is going to work in these new buildings, who is going to be the teachers, who is going to be the EA’s?

They have talked about one area that needs to be addressed.

We have been advocating for more school spaces across the province. That is a good thing to have these spaces there, but you also have to talk about the personnel part of it.

Who's going to be working in those buildings?

Then they had a town hall last week, the minister and the premier, telling teachers about this new funding.

Teachers asked again and again, ‘What are you doing about my classroom now, my overcrowded classroom, my lack of resources? I'm feeling burnt out.’ And all of the answers were, ‘Well we're going to build more schools’.

So they're not addressing the issues that teachers and students and parents are facing today in our classrooms.

They're projecting three or four years down the road.

MH: Now that classes are settled what do the pressures look like in the school setting given the booming population in our province?

JS: We're seeing classrooms exploding in terms of numbers all over the province, and not just in urban settings.

We tend to think this is a city issue, it's not. We're seeing it in rural schools as well where there are large classes out there. A Grade 1 class of 30 kids.

The Alberta Commission on Learning recommends that the class size for a K to 3 class be 17.

We're seeing Grade 1 classes with 30 students, no EAS, no supports for students with special needs.

That's the state of our schools right now. And on top of that, new curriculum literacy assessments, which are taking hours and hours of instructional time away from students, for what purpose, is in there as well.

We're hearing of classes being taught on the gym stage, in libraries, in hallways, CBE’s renting spaces at YMCA’s across the city.

The government is failing to address those issues now. Sure, they're going to build a school three, four years down the road and maybe that'll be the solution then, but we're seeing a crisis in education right now that government is just ignoring.

MH: The ban on cell phones in classrooms. Is that working? Is it a happy place where teachers are concerned?

JS: It's interesting because, when I talk to my colleagues, they were sort of braced for a lot of pushback from parents and from students around that and they're not seeing that right now so cell phones are going away.

There's a little bit of pushback in some spots, but for the most part, cell phones are away.

Kids are engaging with one another in classrooms. So far, so good. It seems to be working out well.

I’ve been talking to a lot of people that are grateful for it, but they also have that autonomy to use the cell phone in their classroom if they need to as part of a lesson, and that was one of the key elements that we wanted to see in terms of that policy.