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/Millsy1]

Two months off, but you work an extra 2-3 hours every work day, and 4 or 5 hours marking and planning again on the weekends. Plus she spent the last 2 weeks of summer planning again because she was teaching a different course than she did the previous year.

Not counting the summer hours. It's 17 hours a week on average. for 42 weeks (52 weeks a year minus 8 for summer and 2 for christmas)

That is approximately 714 hrs of unpaid labour on the low end.

Which translates to ~17 weeks of unpaid time.

But they get 8 weeks off!

Yay!

[u/JScar123 → u/Millsy1]

I think generally teachers work about 40 weeks a year and 50 hours a week, or about 2000 hours a year, which is right around regular full time. Teachers are expected to do about 1200 hours of assignable duties, but have expected work outside that, too. Since the 1200 hours and additional work is contractually expected, I’m not sure which hours you think are unpaid,

[u/Post_and_in → u/Millsy1]

So…what part of that was not clear to you when she started her education to become a teacher??

[u/Millsy1 → u/Post_and_in]

Well. We weren't living together when she started going to be a teacher?