Has Danielle Smith ever had an original thought or is she just pulling everything she says out of the MAGA playbook?
Reopen the government Get back to work and we can negotiate to protect healthcare for millions of Americans you concerns. - - MAGA Mike Johnston Danielle Smith
This is not a black and white issue. On one side the teachers are definitely facing classrooms that are increasingly more complex. There are more kids who have individualized programs, there are more kids who have English as a second language, and there are more with mental health issues. Teachers dont have the resources to deal with EVERY need and still be able to cover all the curriculum they are required to teach. They do need more help, even more than a wage increase.
On the other hand, the government also knows that a 12% raise for all teachers over 4 years is not unreasonable, (and some would get up to 17% as the grid would be equalized across the province giving a bump to some lower paid divisions) but they dont want to commit to classroom size caps because of the additional cost of constructing new schools and the extra staff when they already have committed to building 90 new schools and spending nearly 9 billion on those projects. They committed to funding 3000 more teachers but finding them and more Educational Assistants is going to be tough.
They also know that there are other unions looking at what the nurses got (20% over 4 years) and what the teachers are asking for and then looking at the budget, which is projected to be over 6 billion dollars DEFICIT and know that if EVERY union asks for that much more the deficit is going to be considerably more next year. That money has to come from somewhere and no one likes higher taxes.
Then you gotta add in the political factor that the ATA and the NDP are closely aligned and this isn’t just teachers vs the gov, there is definitely a UCP vs the NDP subplot going on as the NDP looks toward gaining ground for the next election.
None of this is cut and dried. And the whole “Danielle stupid/MAGA sucks” rhetoric is ridiculous and naive. Do some research and make an informed comment.
When the government refuses to negotiate in good faith and instead imposes a contract unilaterally killing collective bargaining with the notwithstanding clause, you bet it’s cut and dried.
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Tax/stop subsidizing the fucking Oil and Gas industry to the tune of more than a billion dollars per year and pay your fucking teachers.
Giving money to an industry that is killing the planet THAT’s unreasonable, not paying teachers more.
It isn’t that people don’t want to be teachers at EAs. It’s that they don’t want to be teachers and EAs for shit wages with little to no support and huge classes. If you want people to become teachers giving them good working conditions, good benefits, and good pay.
It’s really very simple.
You have to pay people what they think their work is worth or they won’t work for you.
Its not ‘simple’. Teachers generally dont get into the profession for the pay because its not terrible, but it does need a raise, they’ve fallen quite far behind inflation. Their benefits are actually pretty good - dental, health, massages, counseling, paid leave for medical, family, bereavement, etc, its pretty comprehensive.
And the job has a lot of security which many jobs dont. So that part’s pretty good.
But the class size thing is anything but simple. A Kindergarten class with 22 kids is 22 kids. Likely a few learning issues in there but not really defined at that point. But then you get to senior high and now you have options. Might be 30 in an English class, but only 15 who are taking Band class. Or 10 in Biology but 25 in Chemistry, so how do you set a “class size” for senior high because not all kids take all the same classes.
And then comes complexity. Any teacher can tell you that a class of 30 kids who are all similar ‘average learners’ is far easier to teach than a smaller class with 20 students where 10 of them have individualized programs, 5 of them are new to Canada and dont speak much English and 2 of them have severe learning issues and need Educational Assistants because of extreme behaviour issues. So what’s a good class size? 20? Or 30? It gets tricky and definitely not “very simple”
I like how you know that some classes are too big to manage. You list several considerations a teacher may use to determine what is and isn’t a manageable class size. Then you turn around and use that to argue AGAINST class size limits.
You apparently oppose any class size limit because “it doesn’t perfectly resolve every situation”, leaving the teachers with no class size limits and no tools to resolve the very real issue of managing large class sizes.
This is a perfect encapsulation of conservative logic.
1.You see a problem you agree is real 2. You see someone’s proposed imperfect solution to the problem which certainly would shrink the size of the problem but not perfectly solve it. 3. You oppose the solution because although it would shrink the size of the problem, it’s imperfect and doesn’t solve the whole thing all at once. 4. You don’t propose or support any replacement. 5. The problem continues to grow unresolved, and you’re satisfied having done a good job stopping any kind of progress whatsoever.
Where did I say I disagreed with class size limits? My entire post was about how its not a simple thing to measure. You’ve jumped to a conclusion and then put a whole lot more assumptions on me and on “conservatives”.
They said this strike was about class size limits and you said the problem is too complicated for simple class size limits, disagreeing with the union position.
Do you really think the teachers asking for class size limits don’t understand the nuance you pointed out? Do you think you’re the only one who understands the complexity of the situation. And yet they’re all asking for class size limits anyways, because although it’s imperfect it’s better than the current approach.
I don’t see where you’re confused. When you respond against a statement you’re disagreeing with it, as I’m disagreeing with you. Stop pretending context doesn’t matter and each of your statements should be taken and debated independently. That’s nonsense!
It’s weird, because the experts in the situation - highly-educated people with experience teaching classes - are right there in case you want to ask.
My sister-in-law left Canada because she wanted to teach but couldn’t afford it here. She’s retiring in Sweden soon as a full citizen with a family and great plans.
(Imagine a decent wage and a good retirement, but also in a country where things mostly still work and make sense)
I was explaining the issue for the NON educators here my friend. Im an ex teacher and a retired principal. My son is a principal. My wife is a teacher. Two of my daughter in laws are teachers. My father was a teacher. I GET IT.
I was trying to explain the complexity of the situation for those who’ve never been in a classroom and don’t understand that you can’t just say “Cap class sizes” and be done with it because it’s not that simple.
I read what the ATA was proposing about class sizes and it was quite logical and reasonable in my opinion and they did propose doing it over time in a graduated way, so I’m not sure why the gov pushed back so hard, still trying to research the arguments on both sides.
It is very simple. If you don’t pay people enough or their working conditions aren’t good enough they won’t work for you. You may only think that the work is worth $X but if people won’t work for anything less than $Y then you’re going to have trouble getting people to work for you if you only pay $X.
The Alberta government could stop spending $30 billion on corporate welfare and instead spend that paying teachers what they are worth. Of course, ideologues like Smith don’t like high quality fact based public education because better educated people tend to be more liberal.
You’re framing this like its mostly a salary issue. Their pay is the lesser part of their complaints. They want a raise yes, but that’s not the bigger issue: its about the increasingly complex challenges in the classroom. Even if they got a big raise those complexities would still exist and THAT is what makes the job hard to do. And that’s the part that’s not an “simple” fix.
You said that they needed more teachers and more EAs. That takes money. Being paid a lot more makes you willing to deal with a lot more. The old, “They don’t pay me enough for this shit” refrain comes to mind. If they took the $30 billion they are handing out in corporate welfare and put it into education it would go a LONG way to solving the problem.
Where do you get this “30 billion in corporate welfare” figure from? Is that money that is taken from the provincial budget and given to corporations, or is that tax breaks? Big difference.
The Fraser Institute. That’s just direct handouts. That’s taking money that the citizens of Alberta paid into their government for things like healthcare and EDUCATION that are instead being given to for profit corporations. When you include tax breaks and other incentives it’s likely much higher.
Thanks for the link. I will definitely do a deeper dive.
IMPLEMENT A SALES TAX.
A sales tax is a regressive tax. None of us should have sales taxes to begin with. Instead, they should cancel subsidies to oil&gas companies and start taxing them appropriately for the climate killing criminal enterprises that they are.
Do you know how those “subsidies” actually work. They dont GIVE money to oil and gas companies, they give them breaks on their own taxes and royalties. There is no big pot of money that is scooped out to give to O and G that could be given to teachers instead. In return the O and G not only keeps Alberta’s economy afloat, it also is a major source of money for the rest of Canada’s budget. It also provides a huge number of AB’s population with very good paying jobs which means those people are all paying significant income tax which IS what pays the teacher’s salaries.
Even easier then. Get them to pay their fair share.
The rest of your post I chalk up to oil&gas propaganda. Alberta’s economy would not need Oil and Gas to stay afloat if they hadn’t been institutionally captured by these climate killing ghouls and had diversified their economy. Like honestly, this is just Big Tobacco but worse, because they are not polluting just lungs, but the entire planetary biosphere, and you’re going to seriously make that argument? They are evil psychopaths, just like Big Tobacco, profiting off of the death and misery of others.
And there is no reason whatsoever that it should be so. Alberta has a fantastic geography for renewables. What Quebec is for hydroelectricity they could be for wind and solar. But instead they keep licking psycho boot. Fuck that. Pay your god damn teachers.
Well, those “ghouls” (seriously?) not only keep AB afloat, they make enough money so that we dont have to pay sales tax, which is a huge benefit to all Albertans. You only have to travel to other provinces to realize there is a MASSIVE difference to your wallet when you’re only paying 5% GST instead of an additional 7 to 10% PST on top. That literally makes my life better every single day.
Secondly, those “ghouls” (eye roll) also provide a LOT of very well paying jobs in AB which is why we are a have province instead of a have not province with the highest per capita incomes (over $96,400) in Canada. I dont work in O and G directly but my son in laws do, and the people who use my services do, so O and G very directly enhances the lives of my family. Solar/wind/other powers are nice but they dont provide great incomes.
Thirdly I absolutely reject the whole ‘climate killing’ virtual signalling of those who decry O and G because I know that Canada only emits 1.5% of the worlds GHG’s and the hypocrites who point a finger at O and G would not consider actually taking action against the 98.5% emitters, specifically China and the US. Have you stopped buying goods from China? Have you stopped traveling to the US or buying any goods from the US til they clean up their act? If you have, great, but 99% of Canadians haven’t and they dont actually give a crap, they just like to point fingers at O and G and yell about the ‘climate’.
Its far easier to point the finger at the thimble of pollution coming from Canada than it is to actually do something concrete about the shiploads and truckloads of pollution coming from the places where you cause it by buying all their goods. Take the plank out of your own eye and I’ll take your argument seriously.
Canada emits way more per capita than China. And China is a world leader in electrification and renewables. Again, things that we should be doing instead of glazing oil and gas. Roll your eyes all you want, but Canada’s 1.5% of global emissions, when we are 0.5% of the global population is an atrocious climate crime.
Your precious incomes will soon be worth squat by the way, the way the climate crisis is unfolding. How many times does your house have to burn or flood before you realize that? My own insurance premiums have gone up because of shit like this and my municipality here in Montreal has to completely rethink storm drainage with sponge parks everywhere. Who pays for that I wander? Look beyond your nose… Climate crisis resilience is something we all pay for. Plank in my eye, get off your high horse and face the music, buddy. The petro-state lifestyle is almost over.
And like I said, against regressive sales taxes. I want to tax capital gains, corporate profits.
It’s also ridiculous how you keep touting your life being better because of your wallet. I guess education for the next generation isn’t among the things that matter for a good life over there. I guess I’m too Greek sometimes and too stuck up on ideals of education. Who needs ευ ζειν when your taxes are low. Somebody tell Aristotle’s ghost the barbarians have other ideas.
Yes, we barbarians in the west hate education. Thats why I have 7 years of post secondary with two degrees and my daughter is not only a Ph.D but an MD. Her husband is an MD. And my son is a school principal with his Masters. We’re all just dumbies over here in lala petroland.
Since WHEN does the climate care about PER CAPITA emissions? Emissions are a GLOBAL problem which means the climate does not look at every person’s output, it only matters what the TOTAL emissions are. And even if we totally shut down the oil patch it wouldn’t make more than 0.5% difference. Thats a margin of error considering this is all based on computer modelling and the data inputs are what makes the most difference.
Lovely that China is actually trying to change its horrid practices. They are still 30% of the worlds problem. From ONE country.
The petrostate is here for another 50 years til there are better affordable, reliable alternatives. Get used to it. (The first time I heard oil and gas was in decline was in 1970. Yep. Still waiting 55 years later)
Pay your teachers.
I’m on board with that too honestly.