Heroes? Who are the real heroes in the education system?

I was shocked and dismayed to read an article in the Province, written by Joy Ruffeski, retired administrator and past president of the BC Retired Principals and Vice Principals association?

She insists that principals are unsung heroes in the current teachers’ job action.

Giving the title of hero to a group who has kept silent about the cuts to the education system for over 10 years seems a bit of an overstatement. 

We might not be in this situation if the principals, vice principals and superintendents had stood up to the government. We may still have our teachers of the special needs, our librarians and more reasonable class sizes and workable class compositions. We may not have health and safety issues in our labs and shops because of overcrowding. In fact we may have improved on what we had in 2001 if principals and other administrators had the courage to stand up and work as hard as teachers have to maintain and improve services within the education system. Their silence has NOT helped the students.

Instead they have left the job to teachers.


It is astounding that someone, who worked within the system, could not see that the workload of teachers is untenable with or without the few jobs that the principals/administration have had to do during the job action.  The administration is now adding to their workload what teachers have been doing forever (with constant additional tasks being added over the past 10 years).  If administrators can’t handle it for a few months, just imagine what it has been like for teachers for 10 YEARS!

And don’t ever think that the administration has not cut back on what teachers usually do.  Some districts have eliminated recess to avoid supervision.  Others have refused to do paperwork and money collection for field trips, thus causing trips to be cancelled (and then blaming the job action). But somehow it is okay to burden teachers with this extra work?

There is a positive to this article however.  What it is doing, is admitting to the public that a teacher’s job is too difficult.  Just think, a teacher who works close to an average 50 hours per week, has all this to do as well.  Perhaps now that administrators have experienced a bit of the reality, they will, instead of agreeing to pile even more on to teachers, work to support teachers. Perhaps they will realize the need for adequate preparation time for teachers. Perhaps they will join the fight for adequate funding and workable class sizes and compositions instead of checking off the hundreds of forms saying that class sizes and compositions are suitable for student learning when they clearly are not.

Perhaps they will join the true heroes of the system and become heroes themselves as well.

We can hope.

Response to George Abbott's Editorial re Appointment of "neutral" fact-finder

On Feb. 10, Minister of Education, George Abbott, released an "opinion-editorial" regarding the recent appointment of government insider, Trevor Hughes, as a so-called "neutral" investigator into the progress of teacher/BCPSEA bargaining. Following are my comments, in italics and bolded and red,  to many of the assertions made by Minister Abbott.
Opinion-Editorial
By George Abbott
Minister of Education
Feb 10, 2011
VICTORIA - Since being appointed Education Minister last March, I've had the pleasure of visiting 95 schools and half of the province's 60 school districts. I've met with hundreds of teachers, students, parents and administrators.

Every visit and every meeting has only reinforced in my mind that British Columbia has a great education system, filled with people who are passionate about what they do.
I've seen first-hand how important teachers are to student success.
So if you really mean this, why is your focus on fix the teacher? Why are you trying to control teacher Pro-D, implement an evaluation system that does not contain due process, etc.?

I also know how important it is for teaching assistants, administrators, principals, parents and teachers to work together to support learning. It takes co-operation and a team of people to help students reach their full potential.

Unfortunately, the current teacher's strike makes this kind of co-operation virtually impossible.
This statement is untrue.  Teachers will meet with teaching assistants, parents and other teachers. They will not meet with administration unless the administrator is also teaching a particular student. 

Teachers are not attending staff meetings nor any other meetings at which the principal is present. There are no collaborative meetings between teachers, principals, vice-principals, district staff and education assistants. There are no written communications with principals, whether they are student marks, progress reports, or report cards. Unfortunately, it is often the very students most in need of our educational teams who bear the brunt of the union's actions.
Where is the evidence to back up such a statement?  You know full well that the teachers' job action has been designed to NOT be detrimental to student learning.

Almost a year ago, employers and the teachers' union sat down to negotiate a new contract. We made it clear from the outset that we had a net-zero mandate. But employers also wanted to talk about how to improve benefits for teachers, how to ensure the right teachers are matched to the right jobs, and how to support good teachers so they can become great teachers.
Where is the evidence that there is a plethora of teachers in the wrong jobs? Is it worth alienating the whole teaching force of BC to correct a handful of bad decisions by principals? Any problems in this regard are not the fault of teacher collective agreements.

Then last fall, government put $165 million in new funding on the table to deal with class composition issues. And yet - like everything else we brought forward - the teachers union walked away from discussions on how to best use those funds. Their singular focus has been to secure a large salary increase - 15 percent over three years -- and other major compensation improvements estimated at over $2 billion.
The teachers' union did not walk away from the discussions. The government walked away from the table because they refused to talk about any agreement that would limit class size and composition.  Moreover, the BCTF's focus has not been solely on compensation improvements. The BCTF tabled a proposal on class size and composition at the remedy table which offered FLEXIBILITY for families.   When digging deeper into how much the new $165 million would benefit students it would benefit each student by 27 cents per day or 1 minute of time per day. (See http://staffroomconfidential.blogspot.com/2012/02/bcs-learning-incentives-fund-1-minute.html ) Furthermore the process for getting that paltry sum would cause schools and districts to compete for it.  Along with not being even close to adequate, it is an extremely undignified (and I would say unsavoury) way to obtain funding for our students with special needs.
On the salary bit: The BCTF tabled a salary proposal that would ensure a cost of living increase for each of three years along with a very modest labour market adjustment that would make a very slight move towards catching up to other provinces.  BC teachers are now 9th to 11th out of 13 prov and territories. This is nothing for the BC Liberal govt to be proud of. This is an opening proposal and is negotiable. Despite 11 months of negotiations and nearly 80 bargaining sessions, there are few signs of progress. We have successfully negotiated agreements with all other major public sector unions. The teachers' union, unfortunately, steadfastly refuses to accept British Columbia's economic and financial reality. The union's proposal to increase personal income taxes by 25 per cent to pay for their wage demands is completely unreasonable and ignores the needs and challenges of families across this province.
The "economic and financial reality" of the BC gov't is as a result of some very unwise decisions by the Liberal govt.  There is the "roof" (over half a billion $), then the enormous tax breaks to corporations which amounted to a loss of billions in tax revenue. The logic presented by the Liberals was that it would result in a "trickle down" of jobs.  That didn't happen.   Let's not forget the smart meters that no one wants. That amounts to nearly 1 billion dollars. Some whole municipalities have spoken in opposition to installing these expensive meters.  In order to pay for these unwise decisions, the education system has been deprived of over 3 billion needed dollars in the past 10 years and the public sector workers, the real economic workhorses, have been forced to pay for these mistakes. The BCTF is absolutely NOT advocating for a tax increase for the citizens of BC.  The gov't needs to take another look at their own  priorities. They are the ones who are ignoring the needs and challenges of families across this province by prioritizing tax cuts to the wealthy, and other unwise expenditures, over the education of future generations, the very people who will be running our province in a few years.

The strike is having a real impact on students and creating a strain in our schools and classrooms. There is rising anxiety, frustration and concern amongst all educational partners about the length of time this dispute has gone on and the impact on 500,000 students across British Columbia. Government would prefer to negotiate an agreement, but we cannot let the current impasse drift indefinitely.
Respect teachers and care about students. That is the solution. You can't put students first if you put teachers last.

I am simply not prepared to see a school year pass without every parent in B.C. getting a fulsome accounting of how their children are progressing in school. I am particularly concerned about the impact on vulnerable students.
Teachers are working harder than ever to give students a full accounting of their progress.  If parents have further concerns they should contact their child's teacher. They will receive a far more comprehensive and useful accounting than any report card ever could.

This past week, in an effort to resolve this issue, I asked Labour Minister Margaret MacDiarmid to appoint a neutral party to inquire into the status of negotiations. It may well be that this individual can find reasons to be optimistic about continuing negotiations - or it may be that government will need to look at other ways to resolve the dispute.
Minister MacDiarmid has failed in her job.  She has not appointed a neutral  party. She has appointed an Assistant Deputy Minister within the Liberal Government to do the inquiry.  Under no definition of the word "neutral" is this a neutral appointment. Claire Avison, also an Assistant Deputy Minister of the Liberal Government, has been at the bargaining table since June 2011 and has clearly stated that the government mandate is non-negotiable.  A truly neutral party would find this pre-condition to bargaining as a major blockage to full free collective bargaining. 

This past fall, we announced BC's new Education Plan to transform education and better prepare students for the 21st century. It has been a great success. Now, more than ever, we want teachers to work with all the educational partners to improve our system.
But to move forward, we need to restore some degree of normalcy to what remains of the school year. And I sincerely hope the neutral party, working with the employers and the teachers union, can help us find that constructive path.
 Minister Abbott repeats the term "neutral party."  I do not see any neutral party involved.  This appointment is eroding the credibility of the Liberal government even beyond where it is now.  The appointment of a similar "neutral party" in September of 2005 (also under a net zero mandate) resulted in legislation being introduced within 3 days of the final report from Assistant Deputy Minister Connolly.  That report appeared to be pre-planned and biased and I don't see any reason to believe that this time it will be any different.
One point that I missed. Mr. Abbott says " I sincerely hope the neutral party, working with the employers and the teachers union, can help us find that constructive path."  This statement is anything but sincere.  He knows full well that the so-called "neutral party" has been given a yes or no task. He is to say yes they can reach agreement or no they can't. I don't see that it is within his mandate to do anything that could be termed constructive.