B.C. teachers want what they have no chance of getting

The Globe and Mail

By GARY MASON

Thursday, August 25, 2005 Page A7

VANCOUVER -- Pity British Columbia's teachers. Here they go again, waging a war for which there is not only little public support but also zero odds of winning.

Fighting through the rhetoric to make sense of the issues is almost impossible.

It's like the health care debate that way.

For every study one side produces to bolster its position, the other side sees it and raises it one.

Class size is the big issue for teachers on the West Coast, who announced this week they are taking a strike vote next month. They say there are more students than ever in the classroom, including a growing number with special needs. Some teachers have aides to help with these students, they say, but many do not.

The teachers offer anecdotal examples of lone shop instructors with 35 students, 11 of whom have special needs.

The government, meanwhile, says that before the definition of what constituted special needs students was changed a few years ago, there were sometimes as many aides in classrooms as students.

The truth, as it often does, exists somewhere amid the tangle of such claims.

Teaching has become a far greater challenge since students with special needs began being integrated into the general classroom.

And the extra work this has meant for teachers has been underappreciated by most provincial governments.

At the same time, teachers can't expect every student with a mild attention deficit to have an aide assigned to him or her five hours a day.

The workplace has changed for all of us. And in most cases it's not nearly as cushy as it once was.

British Columbia's teachers say they want smaller class sizes so they can deliver a better education to their students. A few less students in each class can make all the difference in the world, according to the B.C. Teachers' Federation.

Currently in the province, there is a limit of 22 students in kindergarten, and 24 in Grades 1 to 3.

From Grades 4 to 12, there is a limit average of 30, which means some classrooms can have less than that number and some far more.

B.C. teachers aren't the only ones calling for fewer students in the classroom. Teachers in Ontario waged the same fight and won.

The Ontario government spent $90-million in 2004-05, and will increase that amount to $126-million this year before jacking up the figure to $450-million by 2007-08, all in an effort to cap class sizes.

In Alberta, a public commission on learning recommended smaller class sizes, and the government listened there, too. Alberta will add $149-million to the education budget and hire 2,265 more teachers by next year to reduce class sizes to an average of 23 students.

The difference between Ontario and Alberta is that one government can afford the measures and one cannot. You guess which is which.

Meantime, the C. D. Howe Institute released a report this week that suggests governments are crazy to be spending millions to reduce class sizes when there is no evidence it helps students. This is not the first study to suggest this. Of course, teachers can produce their own reports that indicate just the opposite.

With the B.C. government just beginning to get its financial house in order, thanks to a buoyant economy and fiscal restraint, Premier Gordon Campbell isn't likely to sign up for the same class-size reduction plans launched by his counterparts in Ontario and Alberta. He's not likely to give B.C. teachers the big fat raise they're looking for, either.

The government's current "net zero contract" policy expires next March. B.C. teachers have been without a contract for a year, which means they'll get no increase for the past year, no increase this year and maybe a modest one in the third year of a three-year deal.

And if they don't like it they can . . .

Do virtually nothing.

Another thing the B.C. Liberals did in recent years is declare education an essential service. This means teachers can go on strike but the government can go to the Labour Relations Board and get them ordered back to work, which is what it would most certainly do -- and there is precious little the teachers can do about it.

This is why the war the teachers are declaring in B.C. is virtually unwinnable.

If they had the public on their side, it might be another matter, but they don't. Many parents have a hard time feeling sorry for someone who makes a good salary and gets summers off. They don't much like it when job action by teachers forces them to stay home from work or make last-minute child-care arrangements.

It doesn't seem fair, given the important role teachers play in our children's lives, but that's the way it is.

Not just in B.C., but across the country.