Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[iggyformayor]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I thought we had $10 a day daycare. So now parents make a profit? No wonder they support the strike. How do I get a kid to get in on this profiteering?

$10 a day daycare doesn’t apply to grade school kids. We pay $600/month for before and after school care for my son, for an hour and a half of care/day. The childcare facility that provides this is offering care during the potential strike for $50 a day, which we cannot afford, meaning we will need to either ask for exceptions from our employers to work from home or rely on friends and family to help watch my son.

Regardless, we are 100% behind the teachers on this and will do what we need to do as long as this lasts.

[malcolmk14]

Originally Posted by RandyHolt

I keep seeing figures tossed around and I can't figure out what is being counted in the teacher count. From what I've seen there are 51,000 or so full and part time teachers, which I'm assuming includes Principals, Music Teachers, etc. and maybe admin staff?

If there's 700,000 ish kids in the Alberta system and class sizes of 30 per teacher on average right now, that would only be 23,000 - 24,000 full time teacher equivalents which is less than half of the 51,000 figure in the articles.

Can someone who knows the system better explain why there is such a discrepancy? And how small of a drop in the bucket 3,000 new teachers would even be if only half are being used to reduce classroom sizes?

Yeah just because the ATA has 51,000 members that doesn't mean that's how many teachers are actively working. This includes Principals, Assistant Principals, Specialists, etc., as well as substitutes, part-time teachers, teachers on medical/maternity leave, and probably many more situations I'm not thinking about. The CBE has about 6200 FTE teachers and is the largest board in the province. Not all of those are classroom teachers, though. I'd guess maybe 5,000 that actually have a classroom - but could be off on that number. I think there are over 8,800 ATA members in the CBE.

[RandyHolt]

Originally Posted by malcolmk14

Yeah just because the ATA has 51,000 members that doesn't mean that's how many teachers are actively working. This includes Principals, Assistant Principals, Specialists, etc., as well as substitutes, part-time teachers, teachers on medical/maternity leave, and probably many more situations I'm not thinking about. The CBE has about 6200 FTE teachers and is the largest board in the province. Not all of those are classroom teachers, though. I'd guess maybe 5,000 that actually have a classroom - but could be off on that number. I think there are over 8,800 ATA members in the CBE.

Appreciate the information. Hopefully when a new deal is finally struck then, there will be significantly more than 3,000 teachers added over the length of the agreement, and some sort of guarantee that a high percentage will be classroom teachers.

Ridiculous that the system has reached such a low point, and hopefully there is enough that can be done for the teachers so that the strike can last as long as needed.

[ah123]

Re ATA membership, found this

If you are a teacher employed by a public, separate or francophone school board in Alberta, you are required to be an active member of the ATA. Other teachers may join as associate members. Education students may join as student members.

Active membership

More than 40,000 full -and part-time teachers form the core of the ATA's active membership.

Eligibility

Alberta’s Teaching Profession Act (external link) makes membership in the ATA automatic upon employment as a teacher in the public education system.

There are two exceptions:

A teacher who has been named by a board to be a superintendent or chief deputy superintendent
A teacher who has elected to renounce their active membership in favour of associate membership or nonmembership

https://teachers.ab.ca/about/membership


Pretty sure that principals and vice-principals are not ATA. Also, I believe that teachers at private schools are not ATA.

Regarding the 3000 extra teachers, Google tells me there about 2000 public and separate (Catholic?) schools in AB, so the 3000 teachers works out to 1.5 extra teacher per school. That is not going to alleviate the 40+ students in a classroom (my daughter is in high school and her Bio and Social classes have 38-40 students. Math classes in her school are 40+ students)

[puffnstuff]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

Turkish tylenol, war room, research centre on US-Canada relations, the world's worst opinion polls and surveys, carpet for Smith's office.

I saw it refered to as Trylenol the other day, quite apt I thought.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by Sylvanfan

My guess is that they'll do everything they can to strongarm you back to work and try to get you to accept the same deal that they tabled back in May and again here last week.

I'm sure that will only help but boost morale....

I suspect this government sees a union that doesn't have a war chest to go through again strike. So they likely will try to exploit that for their gain. With my wife's union HSAA should they opt to strike some workers would be deemed essential so they have a mechanism to have the forced workers to allocate some of their pay to picketers. Not as good as a war chest per se, but at least something to indicate they can dig in for 3-4 weeks.

By no means am I defending this government, just trying to guess how they see things. Hopefully most parents don't just pocket the money. I'd rather see it be put back into education. Whatever funds I get for my daughter, I'll try and donate those back to the school.

you are awesome and would be the 1%. Parents are definitely pocketing the money.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Nyah

The UCP are ####ing cowards. They can't handle one question from a high school kid but expect teachers to handle 30+ in a classroom.

First thing that popped into my mind.

[puffnstuff]

I am just gonna post this busboobs column from 2018 with an excerpt quoted from near the end for NO REASON WHATSOEVER...

https://globalnews.ca/news/4067888/d...ublic-schools/

Public Interest Alberta is the latest to advocate that Alberta’s independent schools should have their funding reduced and eventually phased out.
How about we go the other way? Maybe every independent school needs to be fully funded and we need to phase out every government-run, union-controlled public school more interested in indoctrinating students than teaching them critical-thinking skills.
We are spending billions of dollars to graduate students that have no capacity to think. When are public schools going to be held accountable for that?


This may have been the first time I read one of her columns, she is not a good writer at all

[Fuzz]

We are spending billions of dollars to graduate students that have no capacity to think.

The lady doth protest too much.

[Looch City]

Sounds like UCP is digging in and prepped for a long strike.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by Looch City

Sounds like UCP is digging in and prepped for a long strike.

It’s because they know that the ATA doesn’t have the warchest and teachers literally can’t afford a super long strike. Once you start living on debt the cost of that debt will offset any material wage increases you’re hoping for such that after 2-3 weeks you’ll fold.

I think that’s their plan. This gov is brutal. If you’re willing to light $105mm on fire in a 2 week strike I don’t understand why you’re not willing to budge a little more. Then like no PST, resistance on a pile of other ####. None of this makes sense. They spend $460mm on private education, 70% of what a public student gets. How about tone that down to 50% let the wealthy pay for their private schools on their own? So silly.

[Eric Vail]

Originally Posted by ah123

Re ATA membership, found this



https://teachers.ab.ca/about/membership


Pretty sure that principals and vice-principals are not ATA. Also, I believe that teachers at private schools are not ATA.

Regarding the 3000 extra teachers, Google tells me there about 2000 public and separate (Catholic?) schools in AB, so the 3000 teachers works out to 1.5 extra teacher per school. That is not going to alleviate the 40+ students in a classroom (my daughter is in high school and her Bio and Social classes have 38-40 students. Math classes in her school are 40+ students)

Principals and vice-principals are part of the ATA as are most consultants and supervisors.

[Calgary Highlander]

I sent an email to my MLA (Eric Bouchard) and he offered to meet in person. I'll take him up on it, although I don't expect it will lead to change.

[puffnstuff]

https://bsky.app/profile/thebreakdow.../3m235kqunlc2d

Smith on Bruce McAllister suggesting that a high school student should have beaten by his parents...
"He apologized, I consider it at an end"

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by puffnstuff

https://bsky.app/profile/thebreakdow.../3m235kqunlc2d

Smith on Bruce McAllister suggesting that a high school student should have beaten by his parents...
"He apologized, I consider it at an end"

A couple of a$$holes

[Muta]

Amazing how the UCP sees no problem in giving $460M to private schools (5% of students), funded by us the taxpayers, to really only serve the rich (and their kids), although we shouldn't be surprised.

Albertans should demand better from their provincial government, but the delusional conservative chuds in this province that keep voting in this deplorable government will not care to understand, or even hear, this statistic. Remember, blue good / orange bad, even it if bankrupts them and burns their own houses down.

[Point Blank]

Originally Posted by puffnstuff

https://bsky.app/profile/thebreakdow.../3m235kqunlc2d

Smith on Bruce McAllister suggesting that a high school student should have beaten by his parents...
"He apologized, I consider it at an end"

Maybe I’m missing something, but they should have at least reach out the to teenager before “consider it at an end.” This level of contempt for an educated young teenager is disappointing but not unexpected from this government.

Just remember that this government thinks teachers are the ones who aren’t putting students first and very openly broadcasts this regularly

[Regorium]

The student is publicly posting on reddit. Not like he's hiding from Bruce so it should be quite easy to apologize directly instead of releasing a statement.

[puffnstuff]

The Breakdown has invited the student to go on air with them. Also promised not to cut off the mic.

[Dozer]

Originally Posted by puffnstuff

https://bsky.app/profile/thebreakdow.../3m235kqunlc2d

Smith on Bruce McAllister suggesting that a high school student should have beaten by his parents...
"He apologized, I consider it at an end"

I am sure ol Bruce didn't see anything wrong with saying that as he probably enjoys a good bend over and paddling
once in awhile himself