from The Little Education Report
In both Ontario and BC the Liberal Party has launched an all out assault on organized teachers that will lead to serious political blowback on both parties. In Ontario, Liberal Premier David Peterson forced increases in teacher pension contributions and lost the next election to the NDP. Bob Rae attacked teachers and public servants with the Social Contract.
from the Ottawa Citizen
When Dayna Scott’s six-year-old son came home from Hopewell Avenue Public School with a pamphlet about a new phys-ed program at recess, it sounded like a good idea. Rohan is a little fireball, and loves sports of all kinds. The “Active Start recess program,” the pamphlet promised, helps children six to nine develop the general skills they need to move into any sport.
from The Little Education Report
Recent statements by Minister of Education Laurel Broten and PC Leader Tim Hudak follow the hackneyed old saw, “those nice classroom teachers that you all like are being seriously misled by radical union leaders like Sam Hammond (ETFO) and Ken Coran (OSSTF).” Nothing could be further from the truth.
by Thomas Walkom from the Toronto Star
That Ontario elementary school teachers are threatening strike action is no surprise. The only surprise is that the decision took this long.
from The Little Education Report
It is becoming increasingly clear that the Ontario Liberal government cannot successfully negotiate with the province’s teachers and education workers, prorogue the legislature, and run a leadership contest simultaneously. They end up looking like complete fools. The Education Minister Laurel Broten, keeps issuing these idle threats that she is just thinking of perhaps considering, possibly using her powers under Bill 115 to perhaps, order some teacher sanctions off the table if maybe students’ safety is at risk. Her boss, the alleged Premier of the province seems to be in the witness protection program in a secure location, leaving Broten to fight a lonely rearguard action on her own. Not to mix metaphors but she looks increasingly like the tail gunner on a Lancaster bomber, still spitting fire unaware that the pilot is dead, one wing has come off the plane and most of the rest of the crew have already opened their parachutes.
September 21, 2012: While Cowichan Valley kids are back at school, their democratically-elected school trustees aren't. District 79 is still being overseen by an appointed trustee after the province tossed the board out for submitting a needs-based budget in May.
The Cowichan Valley Board of School Trustees voted for a budget with a $3.7-million deficit, explaining its duty was to protect and restore services for students after years of government cuts. The board called for vital school services such as adequate hours of work for education assistants, custodial time, technology courses and bus service.
Groups including the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the BC Association of School Business Officials have identified this structural funding shortfall that has left many school districts squeezed to cut more and more services.
Under the BC School Act, boards are not permitted to run a deficit without ministry permission, despite the government's chronic underfunding of K-12. Then Minister of Education George Abbott fired the board and replaced it with an appointed administrator. Calls for a by-election to return to an elected board have been ignored by Abbott and his successor Don McRae.
OTTAWA, ON, September 11, 2012: Average tuition and compulsory fees for Canadian undergraduate students are estimated to rise almost 18 percent over the next four years, from almost $6,200 in 2011-12 to over $7,300, says a study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
The study looks at trends in tuition and compulsory fees in Canada since 1990, projects fees for each province for the next four years and examines the impact on affordability for median- and low-income families using a Cost of Learning Index.
"Since 1990, with very few exceptions, the tuition fee burden across the country has been increasing faster than incomes. Between 1990 and 2011 the average annual increase in tuition fees and ancillary fees in Canada was 6.2 percent — nearly three times greater than the rate of inflation," says Erika Shaker, co-author of the study and director of the CCPA's education project.
Coran: “Premier McGuinty should not expect that our members or the workers of Ontario to sit idly while the government strips them of their basic and fundamental labour rights.”September 15, 2012: Following the passage of Bill 115, which strips educators of their collective bargaining rights, three of the province’s teacher and education support staff unions have indicated their intention to challenge the legislation in court.
“Instead of focusing on strengthening schools, communities and the economy, the Liberals have chosen to attack people’s charter rights,” said Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario President Fred Hahn. “We are challenging Bill 115 because the rights of Ontarians are protected by the Constitution, even if the Liberals don’t want them to be.”
“Bill 115 isn’t about balancing the budget. It’s not about fixing the economy. It won’t benefit students or schools,” said Hahn.
“The passing of Bill 115 represents one of the darkest days in the history of workers’ rights in recent memory,” said Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) President Ken Coran. “This government has now passed a law that tramples on the rights of education workers in Ontario, and it appears that Premier McGuinty will be targeting other workers in the near future.”
Salutin: Unions are imperfect vehicles but they’re somewhat democratic, like elections, and give teachers a way to speak.September 13, 2012: In light of the recent legislation depriving teachers of their collective bargaining rights, Rick Salutin argues in The Toronto Star that effective teaching is nothing more than people doing their jobs. “Effective teaching” cannot be analysed, compartmentalised and applied uniformly in all classrooms. Salutin sees correlations between the current trend in privatizing public education and the Liberal education bill, yet disagrees with one union’s decision to abstain from extra-curricular activities as it doesn’t put teachers where they need to be: with their students.
“Who will save our schools, and public education?
Not Premier Dalton McGuinty, who’s bought into the common obsession that the money “just isn’t there.” So he freezes public sector wages, pulling even more money out of the economy, assuring there’ll be even less in taxes to spend on programs, leading to the same death spiral that Europe is following. I know high-school kids who understand this better than Dalton, but maybe it’s because they can still take economics and business courses — although his stress on standardized tests in the “basics” is undermining all that.
Karen Lewis, CTU President: We would like to have a fair compensation package that includes acknowledgement of our teachers' experience and their educational attainment. That’s number one.September 2, 2012: Teachers in Chicago face their own challenges now that the schooldays have grown longer. Reductions in raises mean that longer hours are not covered. Seniority, experience and education are not recognised as impacting wages. Health insurance costs have risen. Lee Sustar explains how this happened in The Bullet.
“Can the scrappy band of outsiders that now heads the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) lead the kind of high-stakes fight that most labour unions have ducked? That question looms large – not just for the city's teachers, students and their parents, but for the entire labour movement. Because while both private- and public-sector unions are taking a pounding across the U.S. with layoffs, pay cuts and pension rollbacks, the CTU is gearing up for a showdown with America's most politically connected mayor, Rahm Emanuel – and it will come to a head in September.
At a time when most union officials are shamefacedly selling concessions as ‘the best we can do,’ Chicago teachers are defiant…”
For the complete article, please click here.
