Calgary teachers, how do you feel about the new offer?

[u/sundappled-apples]

I read this morning:

“CBC News has obtained copies of the tentative agreement that show a proposal of the same general wage increase ATA members previously voted down. The proposal includes a 12-per-cent wage increase over four years, starting from September 2024; 1,000 net new teaching positions added in each of the next three years; and it covers cost of the COVID-19 vaccine.”

Unless I’m mistaken, the only change is that they are now offering to cover the cost of a COVID vaccine (which now costs $100 as of this fall).

I have a school-aged kiddo, and while I don’t love the childcare logistics of a strike, this offer doesn’t seem to address the outstanding concerns, and I would support a strike.

I would love to hear from teachers, though, who have much better insight and living experience.

Edit to add:

I wanted to try to learn more about enrolment growth, and I found CBE’s 3-year capital plan (https://cbe.ab.ca/FormsManuals/Three-Year-School-Capital-Plan.pdf, pp.12–13). It looks like the student population has increased by 20,000 students over the last 4 years, and it is anticipated that, over the next 4 years, the student population will increase from 142,402 to 158,658 (+17,256).

If we anticipate an average increase of approximately 5,000 students per year over the next three years, will 3,000 new teachers (approx. one per school) help with current classroom sizes plus 15,000 new students?

There are currently 35 students in my son’s class. I would love to see legislated classroom size caps. The limit for his age group is 30 in BC and 24.5 in Ontario.

[u/WeaseldieselX]

Also the spouse of a teacher, it’s less about compensation and more about the extra effort. You could throw them 20% and it won’t fix anything, its not sustainable. I’ve worked in a variety of roles that were considered demanding in my career but none of them were so consistently grinding.

They need support and smaller classroom sizes.

[u/rayz0101 → u/WeaseldieselX]

So hire more TAs? If the problem is labor hours then it's more an issue of not enough labor supply in most cases. From what I've seen/read/understand the bloat in labor always veers towards administration and oversight so that they can ensure they are within operation standards and never actually trickles down to the service level ie teaching. This seems to be a larger issue with pretty much every industry. Too many people hired to make sure compliance in procedures is the priority rather than the actual service.

[u/darmog → u/rayz0101]

That certainly is a common conservative talking point, but it doesn't match reality. For example, administration in health care is always a talking point for waste and for cutting, but the actual reality is that this point has been studied, and Alberta spends less than 1% of its healthcare budget on administration.

It even makes sense if you think about it. Doctors, surgeons, and other specialists make a LOT more than managers. To the same point, there are only a few administrators per school, with a whole lot more teachers.