Message from Elliott Burnell, President, UBC Faculty Association

I am pleased to inform you that, with the help of mediator Mark Brown of the Labour Relations Board, the Faculty Association has today reached a four-year settlement with the UBC Administration. This agreement includes the “signing bonus”, wage increases in each year and language improvements -details will be sent to all members early next week, and an information meeting will follow the AGM Thursday April 6, 2006. Ratification of the agreement will be by electronic ballot – we will inform you of details next week.

Best regards on behalf of the Faculty Association Bargaining Team and the
Executive.

The tentative agreement for the period July 1, 2006 – June 30, 2010 provides for a monetary package totaling 13% over the four years of the Agreement, out of which are costed $3.2 million in retention funds, $600,000 for a subsidiary agreement with the Sauder School of Business, and $268,000 in other targeted increases – $50,000 to be applied to the Librarians’ minimum scale, and $218,000 to be spent in Nursing across both campuses.

Following the deductions noted above, the monetary package includes general wage increases and market adjustments for all members in each year and a flat-rate increase ($962 per FTE in year one) designed to provide additional benefit to those with lower salaries. The agreement also provides for a signing bonus totaling $10.95 million ($3,255 per member) less statutory benefits, to be divided among members of the bargaining unit.

In addition to the monetary terms, the agreement provides for a number of changes to the Agreement on the Framework for Collective Bargaining, including:

• re-writing articles throughout to reference all members of the bargaining unit, including Librarians and Program Directors;
• substantial expansion of the definition of academic freedom to reflect that contained in University policy;
  provision for a joint consultation committee to address issues of mutual concern on an ongoing basis;

• explicit recognition of the right to be consulted on matters of workload;
• improved access of the Association to information held by the University

Leave of Absence provisions have been amended to increase clarity, and to ensure that members on medical, maternity or parental leave do not face excessive delays in eligibility for study leave. As of this July 1, 2006, up to six months of each medical, maternity or parental leave can be counted as full-time service toward sabbatical.

Finally, the tentative agreement creates a process whereby significant issues that could not be fully resolved by the March 31st deadline will continue to be discussed. Under this process, negotiations regarding the abolition of mandatory retirement will continue, with agreement to involve an external facilitator if the issue remains unresolved after 31 December, 2006.

Letter from UBC Faculty Association president issued today following a meeting of the Faculty Association Executive.

Dear Member,

Your Faculty Association bargaining committee has been negotiating contract language and monetary issues with the UBC Administration since February 15, 2006, and has not yet reached an agreement.

At 13:00 today we started the mediation process at the BC Labour Relations Board with Mark Brown (Registrar, Deputy Vice-Chair and Associate Chair of mediation division) as mediator. We shall communication updates as soon as they are able.

Elliot Burnell
President, on behalf of the Bargaining Team
UBC Faculty Association

Members of the University of Prince Edward Island Faculty Association went on strike at 7:30 am Tuesday morning, March 21, 2006, after late-night negotiations on Monday failed to achieve an agreement. Spirits of strikers were lifted by support from the honking horns of cars and passers-by and students stopping with coffee, donuts and greetings of solidarity. The Strike ended April 5th, 2006.

The strike concerned central issues of salary comparability within the region, workload, benefits and ending mandatory retirement. Late on Monday night (March 20) the employer rejected the association’s substantially revised framework for salary and teaching workload.

According to Wayne Peters, Association President, “This strike concerns fundamental issues of respect for academic staff and quality of education. Our members are determined to have a workplace that at least compares with other universities in the region.”

Information on the UPEIFA strike here.

First we test the students, then we test the teachers. Maybe we should test the parents too? Just joking, but at what point do we realize that testing is about compliance and the generation of market revenue and not about education nor the assessment of real learning. Testing helps to make compliant subjects willing to be evaluated without question –just the sort of person who will refuse to join a union, who will refuse to stand up for themselves when threatened, just the sort of person who makes a great Mac-worker (to borrow Doug Coupland’s now famous term). Philospher and radical educator Bertell Olman comically makes the point in his book How to take an Exam . . . and Remake the World at the Same Time.

BC’s minister of education has put the control over aspects of some BC Standardized tests and the rights to sellsome of these tests into the hands of a private Edmonton-based publishing company, Castle Rock . Of course companies like these feed off of the anxiety of parents and students about making the grade in a test-centric world. The BC page of this company sells “quality, curriculum-based resources” to teachers, students, and parents. Without the push to standardized tests introduced by the string of provincial Education Ministers and former Edomontonian deputy minister Dosdall, there wouldn’t be a market demand for these types of resources. Pushing tests creates a busines opportunity and the chance for goldrush profits for those with an inside track.

The BC Society for Public Education has a veryuseful resource page on standardized testing.

Read about what is happening in the United States with privatized testing.
Educational Testing Service to pay millions for errors in teacher tests
The Educational Testing Service has agreed to pay $11.1 million to settle a class action suit over errors in its primary teacher-licensing test, The New York Times reported. The funds will be used to compensate teachers who lost jobs or some wages because of their incorrect test scores. The Times reported that 27,000 people who took the test in 2003-4 received scores that were incorrectly low, and that more than 4,000 of these people were incorrectly told that they had failed.

As with student testing in schools, states have increased testing for current and prospective teacher, despite the fact that there is no evidence to support the claim that standardized tests predict who will be a good teacher. (Continue reading at the blog Where the Blog Has No Name.)

Is there a labour shortage? What is the impact of the shortage upon our children’s education? What plans have been made to address the problem -long term?

Those are the sorts of questions that I would like to ask the various educational leaders. My two boys report that there are a lot of sick teachers, subs covering several classes and administrators seeming to be popping into to take a class more than they have ever seen. The situation got tot such a level that the Vancouver School Board Human resources office felt the need to issue a memo that tries to put out the rumour mill –but a careful reading would lead any clear thinking person to say that it looks like a serious labour shortage that won’t be short term.

Download Februry 22, 2006 memo to administrators.
Download March 1, 2006 TOC Clarification.The problem even seems to have got the attention of the provincial association of Principals and Vice-Princiapals. IN a CBC interview association president Tom Hierck says thousands of B.C. teachers and principals are expected to leave their jobs in the new few years:

“Our surveying shows we’ll need a thousand new principals and vice principals in the next three to four years. Well, those principals and vice principals will come out of our teaching force. Those teachers will then need to be replaced…And that’s just with principals and vice principals You can extrapolate to the teaching force.” As quoted by CBC, February 23, 2006

The BC Teachers Federation has been seeing an increasing problem on the ground as districts attempt to cover sick teachers and live up to their commitments for professional development leaves. Grass roots teacher have reported the follow general trends n the shortage of Teachers on Call:

Leave requests being denied.
Professional Development and other release time being denied.
Retirees being sought; non-certificated people being hired.
Some positions in areas such as school psychology, math/science, French programs, home ec. and special education are impossible to fill.
Rural areas are hardest hit for ongoing positions and certificated teachers on call, but increasingly this is also being experienced in urban centres.
Increased pressure on ill teachers to prevent them from taking sick leave; non-enrolling specialist teachers not being replaced.
Some beginning teachers still complain at not being able to get on a TOC list which could be related to school boards’ concerns about hiring rights.
Teachers are losing preparation time and cannot take accumulated lost preparation time.
Lack of access to teacher education programs for the non-certificated people who have a first degree, and; use of teacher assistants to replace teachers.

The overall impact of the current shortage is likely to be a long term problem. It may well exacerbate class size issues. The shortage will likely have an impact upon the learning experience of many students. While this is a North American wide problem, the situation in BC has some of its home grown aspects. Since 2001 the provincial government has been waging a war against teachers and public education. Under the guise of improving standards (I trust I am not alone in my bemusement at the rhetoric of constant improvement that issues forth in ministry missives and a rang e of school and district planning documents) the ministry of education has been preparing the ground to spin off lucrative aspects of the system for private industry and to base everything under the so-called efficiency of the market. By the time they are finished the socio-economic divisions within our society will be so wide that the notion of class mobility will have faded into the realm of the quaint fairy tale.

VESTA News

A detailed article on this subject can be found in the Vancouver Elementary Teachers’ Association newsletter. Download file

Teacher shortage has parents scrambling

Janet Steffenhagen
Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Parents of Grade 1 students at Birchland elementary were surprised this week when their children arrived at their Port Coquitlam school to find no teacher and no substitute.

The school had to scramble to make alternative arrangements, which included having the school secretary, the principal and a resource teacher take turns minding the class.

Birchland is not unusual. Hundreds of B.C. schools have found themselves in similar situations as the usual flu-season shortage of substitute teachers has been exacerbated by a recent hiring spree of full-time teachers intended to address widespread concerns about large classes.

Here is an example of grassroots organizing and political pressure that worked. Parent activists who suport inclusive education raised the alarms about this issue, followed with an online petion, and were able to keep the provincial school leaving certifica.

Background information from previous entry here

The provincial government released the following press release earlier today:

Ministry of Education ,2006EDU0016-000141, March 1, 2006

PROVINCE TO CONTINUE ISSUING COMPLETION CERTIFICATES

VICTORIA – The Province will continue issuing school completion certificates for students with special needs.

As part of the new graduation program, school districts assumed responsibility from the Province for issuing school completioncertificates. The new graduation program was developed after an extensive, provincewide consultation process.

However, many parents have indicated the provincial completion certificates are important to them and their children, so the ministry has decided to continue to issue the certificates.

School completion certificates recognize the accomplishments of students with special needs or other students who have succeeded in meeting goals of their educational program, other than graduation.

School boards will be developing the criteria students will have to meet before a certificate is issued, and will be required to make the criteria public. Once a school board has determined a student has met the criteria, the ministry will then issue a school completion certificate.

-30-

Media
contact:

Download Emery Dosdall’s power point presentation on school-based managment

Story breaks in Prince Rupert.
Privatized schools may be in the cards

By James Vassallo
The Daily News (Prince Rupert)
Thursday, February 23, 2006

According to documents obtained by The Daily News, the province is pushing ahead with a plan that would all but eliminate school boards, force schools to be run more like individual corporations and hire more business-minded administrators to run them, rather than promote teachers to the post.

“This program would put all of the power of budgeting within the hands of principals and school planning councils, whereas now all that goes through an elected school board,” said Marty Bowles, Prince Rupert District Teachers’ Union President (PRDTU). “(Administrators will be) number-crunchers, not necessarily a person interested in the social issues of a school.”… To find out how to subscribe to the Daily News (we can mail the paper anywhere), please give us a call at (250) 624-6785 or call toll free 1-800-343-0022. Original Source

See also, previous entry on School Planning Councils.Province looks at more local control of schools
Janet Steffenhagen, Vancouver Sun
Published: Friday, February 24, 2006

The B.C. government is considering a plan to give principals and parents more control over public schools and a greater say over how education dollars are spent locally, Education Minister Shirley Bond confirmed Thursday.

She described the plan as “school-based leadership” and stressed that participation is voluntary for now. Some schools have already expressed interest in being part of the experiment, she added.

But Bond said her government has no intention of eliminating school boards.

The minister was responding to a story in the Prince Rupert Daily News on Thursday that said the province was pushing ahead with a plan that would all but eliminate school boards and force schools to be run more like individual corporations.

“At this point, there is no plan to eliminate public school boards,” she said in an interview with The Vancouver Sun.

“We’re going to have a discussion over the next number of months as we visit schools and school districts to talk about what the system should look like in the future.”

She was referring to a promise in the throne speech that she and Premier Gordon Campbell would visit every school district in B.C. to talk to educators, parents and students about how the system can be improved.

Bond said she wants to build on school planning councils that were introduced by the Liberal government to give parents a greater voice in their schools. The councils, which include the school principal, teachers and parents elected by the parent advisory council, meet regularly to discuss student achievement.

“This is just a concept that builds on the school planning council,” Bond said, adding the councils have been highly successful in many districts. “We’re saying how do we work together to coordinate and collaborate and bring parents and school staff and school planning councils into the decision-making mix together. We want to talk about
that collaboration and that’s the kind of leadership we’re talking about at schools.”

Two school districts — Prince George and Rocky Mountain — are already looking at how they can give more flexibility and decision- making to local schools, Bond said.

Parents want a role in their children’s education, she said. “I can tell you as a parent who went through the system, I didn’t feel like that on a lot of occasions. What we’re saying is they need to be meaningful partners in this discussion.”

She said she was disappointed to hear the plan characterized as a plot to dismantle school boards.

“That’s not in the mix at all. What is in the mix is how do we actually work more efficiently at the school level together.”

Tom Hierck, president of the B.C. Principals’ and Vice-Principals’ Association, said school-based leadership would allow schools to respond to the needs of their local communities rather than simply following directions from the ministry and the local school board. That would be a change from the “one-size-fits-all model,” he said.
“Experience shows we rarely get it right when we do it that way.”

Kim Howland, president of the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils, said parents will want to be assured t the change does not result in inequities in the system. But over all, she said the confederation, which speaks for parents on provincial education issues, believes the best decisions about schools are made by the
individual school community.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

BC’s provincial government brought down their budget today in the legislature. Finance Minister Carole Taylor lauded her budget as balanced and primarily for children. The question remains: will it actually fund their needs?

An initial overview of the budget materials and commentaries shows indicates that, in terms of education spedning, we are only approaching 2001 funding levels. However, this does not take into account increased costs due to inflation or government mandated increases to salaries and MSP since 2001. BCTF Press Release
VANCOUVER, Feb. 21 /CNW/ – The 2006 provincial budget doesn’t address any of the critical issues that teachers fought to bring to the top of the political agenda through their strike last fall.

“Teachers took tremendous risks and showed great courage in standing up for students’ learning conditions. Unfortunately, this budget suggests that the government learned nothing from our job action,” said BCTF President Jinny
Sims. Continue reading BCTF Press release here

David Shreck on Politics in BC
The Campbell government’s news release promoted the February 2006 budget with the headline “Budget 2006 Concentrates on B.C.’s Children”. Some say it could be called Sherry’s budget, in honour of Sherry Charlie, but she isn’t the only child whose name is associated with the Campbell cuts. An alternative is to call it “Ted’s Budget” in anticipation of the report that will be released by Ted Hughes on April 7th. The budget tried to support the claim that it concentrates on children by saying that an additional $421 million would be available to help vulnerable children and their caregivers; the fine print noted that the $421 million is over four years. If that makes budget 2006 the “Children’s Budget” then consider what the September 2005 mini-budget should have been labeled; that’s when Finance Minister Carole Taylor announced $143 million per year, $569 million over four years, in corporate tax cuts even though not a single word was said about that tax gift during the May 2005 election campaign. When the Campbell government had a choice it put corporate tax cuts a year ahead of restoring cuts to child protection, and it gave 35% more to corporations than to child protection. Continue reading Shreck’s commentary.

CBC news coverage
The B.C. government says child protection is its priority in this year’s budget, and has announced plans to increase spending on a host of programs for children at risk and families.
Full CBC coverage here.

CTV news coverage
VICTORIA — British Columbia’s “little ones” were the focus of a budget Tuesday that was dominated by spending on children but which also provided tax relief for homeowners and more money to train workers as the province faces a shortage of skilled labour. Download full story.

Globe and Mail news coverage
VICTORIA — Fuelled by a strong economy and with the 2010 Olympic Games in mind, the British Columbia government yesterday brought in a “quiet,” balanced budget that offered modest tax relief and sought contract peace with public-sector workers.Download full story.

BC Government Materials
Every new budget is an opportunity for British Columbia to take another step forward. Last year’s budget focused on seniors. This year, the budget concentrates on improving services that support, nurture, educate and protect B.C. children. BC Government Budget Highlights here.

On November 9th, 2005 UBC faculty members, parent organization representatives, teachers, and community leaders met to discuss the significance of BC’s longest lasting province-wide teachers strike. Presentations from Catherine Evans (BCSPE), Jinny Sims (Pres. BCTF), Paul Orlowski (Van. Teacher), Kevin Milsep (former VSB trustee), and UBC faculty members Charles Menzies, Stephen Petrina, and E. Wayne Ross discussed a range of issues related to the strike.

Quicktime video footage of this event is now available for viewing and downloading – see “Teachers’ Strike Forum Videos” in sidebar.

Over 300 parents, teachers, support workers, MLAs, Trustees, and community members met in Richomnd BC this past Friday and Saturday (Feb. 10-11, 20065) to discus the issue of class size and composition in our public education system. Parent reps from a wide range of PACs, DPACS, and also the BCCPAC joined in workshops and plenury discussions that explored the peer reviewed academic research that sheds light on the question of whether class size matters.

Webcasts of keynote addresses.The opening plenary session on Friday featured a research presentation by UBC Education faculty member Dr. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl and a personal refelction of a vetern teacher, Kate Noakes, from Fernie Secondary.

Dr. Schonert-Reichel drew upon her own research and that of colleagues through North America to make the case that smaller class sizes (less than 25 or 20 depending upon grade level) is a critical factor in creating positive learning outcomes for children in the K-12 system. The important question, according to Dr. Schonert-Reichel, is why? What is it about smaller class sizes that leads to better learning outcomes?

Drawing upon her research at hasting Elementary in Vancouver Dr. Schonert-Reichel has found that it is the relationships between students and significant adults in the school that is the special ingredient. And, by a significant majority these are caring relationships between teachers and students. The smaller the class size the more caring the teacher-student relations and the better the learning outcomes. Larger class sizes lead to a distancing of teacher from student as the teachers attempt to meet the core learning goals as prescribed by standardized tests and the stress of doing more and more with less and less. It is in this context that the composition of a class –i.e. the racial, linguistic, learning, and health needs of the students- come into play. In crease diversity of the students, increase the class size, and the learning outcomes plummet like a lead balloon.

Kate Noakes, a vetern BC teacher gave us the personal experiential view as a teacher in the public system. In a moving and sincere presentation in which the speaker seemed to be on the verge of tears, Ms Noakes outline the progression of teaching and the face and shape of her classes since she started teaching over twenty years ago. Taken together, the ‘objective’ presentation of the researcher and the moving testimonial of the teacher left no doubt in the audience’s mind that this would be a memberable event.

Overall the conference provided a useful opportunity to meet with parents, teachers, and other community members from across the province. It was refreshing to have an opportunity to actually engage in discussion and to hear a real diversity of opinion being expressed in a constructive and positive fashion. At the end of the conference I was left with a feeling of optimism that parents and teachers share an important concern and have the combined capacity to make a real difference for our children.