Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her finance and education ministers yesterday announced a novel scheme to pay scabs $30 a day to teach school children in the event of a province-wide teachers’ strike!
The rub? It turns out that it’s parents who are going to be expected to do the strike breaking.
Well, at least they won’t have to cross a picket line. They’re going to get to do it all from home – whether they like it or not. As a result, one has the feeling that a lot of people may take the money, but that not a lot of teaching will get accomplished.
“To help ease the extra costs families may face while children are away from their desks during labour action, Alberta’s government is introducing a new payment program for parents,” was the way the government’s press release explained the scheme yesterday.
“This program would be available to parents and guardians of students aged 12 and under who attend a public, separate or francophone school and are affected by teacher strikes,” the official statement said. “Eligible parents or guardians would receive $30 per day, or $150 per week, per student for the duration of the ATA’s labour action.”
The United Conservative Party (UCP) strategic brain trust must’ve really burned the midnight oil Monday to come up with that brainstorm after they learned that more than 43,000 members of the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) had rejected the government’s latest contract offer by nearly 90 per cent.
Either that that or they’ve been planning to provoke a strike by the teachers’ union. “The first payment will be made on October 31,” Finance Minister Nate Horner did say, definitively and confidently, at a news conference yesterday.
“Instead of doing the very thing that teachers have been asking for – investing in our classrooms – the government has now promised parents $30 per day per student when teachers are on strike,” ATA President Jason Schilling said in a statement yesterday afternoon. “This amounts to almost twice as much as teachers are paid to teach those same students in their classrooms.”
The government will finance the payments with money it saves by not paying striking teachers, Horner told the news conference. So it seems likely the UCP has decided to leave teachers out on the picket lines long enough to feel some pain.
“Our goal is to keep our kids in the classroom,” Horner said in the news release. No, really, he went on … “Our government is ready, willing and able to head back to the bargaining table at any time.”
Does anyone remember how during the pandemic, the UCP thought it was critically, absolutely, unreservedly essential that children be together in the classroom, regardless of the physical risk to them and their families, for their mental wellbeing?
That was then. Now, for Premier Danielle Smith’s UCP 2.0, it’s all sort of, meh. Parents will get a “curated” online curriculum toolkit they can use if they wish to run a DIY home classroom. And don’t worry about it, it’s free, and they don’t have to use it.
“The toolkit is a resource to assist parents,” Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides explained not very helpfully at the newser. “It is not a mandatory requirement, but is a tool I’m sure many parents will find useful. These steps send a clear signal we are committed to supporting students and educators.”
Huh? I wonder if they just slapped the toolkit together Monday night along with the release and the press conference script or if they were working on that for a while too?
It sounds as if the government hopes most parents just take the money and don’t complain too loudly. Getting the cash, Horner promised, “should be quite simple and easy.”
“The payments they could expect by the end of the month, for the first month, so the end of October. And it’ll be $150 per week for every kid that’s under 12 and under and is part of the, you know, public, separate or francophone school system.”
Just fill out the online form and the government will send you the dough – at a cost of about $15 million a day, according to the NDP Opposition. Getting it is going to be a heck of a lot simpler than getting a COVID-19 shot in this province, by the sound of it, which certainly says something about the UCP’s priorities.
It’ll also be helpful for teachers with kids of their own in school, who I am sure will be grateful for an official top-up to their non-existent strike pay.
During the news conference, Smith suggested teachers are actually more concerned about managing large classes, which she blamed on a shortage of actual physical classrooms throughout the province, while claiming demands for higher pay are just being pushed by the union.
The fact the ATA’s bargaining committee agreed to the tentative agreement that the union’s membership overwhelmingly rejected on Monday suggests the opposite is true. However, trying to demonize a public-sector union while feigning respect for its members is on brand for the UCP.
Moreover, Schilling said in his statement, “the ATA has put forward concrete solutions like class size caps, but has been shot down at every turn. The resulting memorandum was the product of last-ditch efforts from the ATA’s bargaining team to reach a proposal that teachers could then vote on.”
By and large, reporters at yesterday’s newser seemed more interested in querying the premier about the behaviour of the moderator at her “Alberta Next” town hall the night before in Calgary. Bruce McAllister told an audience member who had a question about private school funding that he ought to be paddled by his parents before cutting off the young man’s mic.
“I know you’d love some chaos but your parents should turn you over your knee,” Bruce McAllister told 17-year-old Evan Li.
Predictably, Smith blew off any suggestions the former Wildrose Party MLA’s glib sorry/not sorry tweet yesterday didn’t meet the standard of an actual apology. “Well, none of us are perfect,” she chirped.
Since McAllister has been pretty consistently rude to questioners who don’t stick to the premier’s separatist script for her supporter-packed Alberta Next rallies, and because Monday night’s in Calgary was the last live one anyway, it’s pretty clear she sees nothing wrong with his behaviour.
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