02) BC LIBERALS CREATE ANOTHER EDUCATION CRISIS

 

PV Vancouver Bureau

 

            Despite a barrage of lies, half-truths and outright scaremongering, the BC Liberal government has failed to move public opinion into line for their attack on teachers. After two decades of underfunding, mostly under the Liberals since Gordon Campbell came to office in 2001, British Columbia's public education system is under tremendous stress. School closures have hit many districts, and school boards have been compelled to download a wide range of cutbacks into classrooms.

 

            The Liberal government has twice been handed stinging legal defeats in the courts over their heavy-handed tactics, but still refuse to bargain in good faith. In their latest move, the Liberals have imposed a confusing, contradictory set of lockout guidelines, threatening to punish teachers with big salary cuts if they refuse to knuckle under to Premier Christy Clark's bullying tactics.

 

            Teachers began a series of four one-day rotating walkouts on Monday, May 26, shutting down schools in different districts to strengthen their demand for a reasonable collective agreement. Across the province, there have been growing indications that students, parents, teachers and even school boards are rejecting the Liberal mantra of "no money for education" - a claim which is at odds with the government's $2 billion-plus annual cuts to taxes for the rich and the corporations since 2002.

 

            The BC Teachers Federation warns that the government's attempt to make good on their threat to roll back teachers wages during job action "will have significant impacts on students for the rest of this school year."

 

            Michael Marchbank, Premier Clark's appointed head of the BC Public School Employers, Association, says that because teachers are starting rotating strikes, the government intends to claw back 10% of their wages. The pay cut will be in effect even on days when teachers are in their classrooms working with students to meet their needs.

 

            To justify the pay cuts, the government is imposing a series of partial and full lockouts. Starting Monday, May 26, teachers are prohibited from being at school more than 45 minutes before and after class time, or from working during recess or lunch hour. All secondary teachers will be locked out on June 25 and 26, and both elementary and secondary teachers are to be locked out on June 27.

 

            Teachers could be disciplined for helping a struggling student at lunch hour, extra‑curricular activities including clubs, drama, music, sports will be cancelled, graduation ceremonies will be impacted, and final exams for some senior secondary students will not be marked. As the BCTF says, none of these impacts would have occurred under the teachers' job action plan.

 

            "We were careful to ensure that already scheduled extra-curricular and volunteer activities continued. We wanted to minimize the impact on students," said BCTF President Jim Iker. "During rotating strikes, teachers would continue all volunteer activities four out of five days a week."

 

            While Premier Clark says that children should not be put in the middle, she is imposing significant disruptions to the education system. Some secondary school teachers will be locked out on the day their students graduate.

 

            Iker said that the directive prohibiting teachers from interacting with students during the lunch hour will have possibly the most wide‑ranging impacts.

 

            The lockout will mean teachers would be insubordinate if they helped a struggling student or a child with special needs during the lunch hour, Iker points out. For many teachers, this is valuable time when students can have important one‑on‑one time to ask questions.

 

            Iker called on the BC government to come to the bargaining table with resources to reach a fair collective agreement.

 

            "Smaller classes, more support for children with special needs, extra one‑on‑one time with all kids, and fair wages - these are our key goals in this round of negotiations," he stated. "That's how we will get a deal and that's how we can end this crisis in education."

 

            This spring, as school districts announced mass layoffs and deep program cuts to balance their inadequate budgets, teachers and parents were demanding reinvestment in public schools. In many places, they took to the streets, protesting at MLAs' offices, turning up the heat on trustees, and using social media to make their concerns heard.

 

            In Port Coquitlam a May 23 rally was spurred by a school district budget that required $13.4 million in cuts and resulted in the layoff of more than 600 teachers and 200 support workers.

 

            Vancouver parents and students, along with other supporters of public education, came out in the hundreds to budget consultations, calling for the Vision-led school board to keep the cuts out of the classroom. This Board, chaired by Patti Bacchus, has been among the most outspoken critics of Liberal underfunding, but it too faces enormous deficits as more and more unfunded costs are downloaded by the province.

 

            In Mission, parents rallied in support of teachers on May 21 in front of their Liberal MLA's constituency office, demanding better education for their children.

 

            In Port Moody, as several trustees voted against the board's final operating budget, more than 100 parents, teachers and support workers turned out for the budget meeting which ended weeks of consultation with stakeholders.

 

            The story has been the same across the province, as the depth of the crisis sinks in to the public. Often the protests have taken the form of impassioned speeches at budget consultations, but in many places, demonstrations have been organized.

 

            All this comes just months after teachers across BC celebrated the latest ruling by the BC Supreme Court, reaffirming that provincial legislation limiting teachers' bargaining rights is unconstitutional. The January ruling restored collective agreement provisions stripped in 2002, and ordered the province to pay $2 million in damages plus court costs.

 

            The legislation was already declared unconstitutional in 2011, and the judge gave the government one year to rectify the situation. However, the government simply reintroduced the same unconstitutional provisions. By removing class‑size limits and class‑composition guarantees, the Premier did significant damage to learning conditions in schools.

 

            "Children who were in Kindergarten when those bills were passed are now in Grade 12, and have spent their entire school careers in larger classes with fewer resources," Iker said at the time. "For the past 12 years, thousands of children couldn't get the services they needed because government broke the law."

 

            The legislation removed provisions that guaranteed smaller classes, support for students with special needs, and services from teacher‑librarians, counsellors, and other specialists. The government then cut hundreds of millions of dollars a year from public education budgets, forcing school boards to cut programs and close more than 200 public schools. More than 3,500 teaching positions, including 1,500 specialist teachers, were also cut.

 

            "If government had respected the Charter, teachers would not have had to spend the past dozen years fighting for our rights," Iker said. "Now we expect that government will do everything necessary to demonstrate respect for the court"s ruling and make the situation right. Restore our smaller classes, rehire our specialist colleagues, and help us rebuild the excellent public education system that British Columbians expect for their children."

 

            But Iker's words were not heeded. Instead, Premier Christy Clark has provoked yet another crisis in the province's public schools.

 

            As the Communist Party of BC points out, this is not just a personal vendetta by the Premier: "The entire public health and education sector is under ruthless attack, not only in BC and Canada, but across the entire capitalist world. In country after country, austerity policies have been imposed on an unwilling population, with devastating results for employment and the quality of public services. All this is being done as part of a broader attempt to shift wealth produced by working people into the hands of transnational corporations and their wealthy shareholders."

 

            The CPBC warns that the Premier and her friends in the corporate sector aim to destroy British Columbia's public education system, deliberately creating crisis after crisis, even as they increase taxpayer funding for private schools.

 

            The government's goal, the CPBC says, is to gut the public school system, compelling working people to shift into profiteering private schools.

 

            The CPBC has urged full support on the picket lines for the teachers as this crisis deepens. Full solidarity is needed to help win a fair collective agreement with BC teachers, including salaries in line with other provinces, and smaller class sizes.

(The above article is from the June 1-15, 2014, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)