So 3% raise a year. The average inflation for the past 4 years is about 3%. So by your statement of freezing wages, you are actually saying you think teachers are overpaid, as they would receive a 3% pay cut each year due to inflation.
If you believe the pay of teachers is correct now, you should support the 12% wage increase. And if you believe working conditions need improving, then you support the teachers strike.
I think teacher pay is reasonable, so am comfortable that the provinces offer on pay is also reasonable. I'm not advocating for a 0% pay increase. A pay increase of 3% per year looks reasonable to me.
Clearly the working conditions are not reasonable and substantially more funding is required.
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The fact Gullfoss is not banned for life on here is such an embarrassment. Just a joke.
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Yeah. This is why it makes me crazy when people always say we should get rid of charters and catholic schools to save admin costs. The CBE has area principals up the ying-yang, they're easily the worst managed of the 3 groups, so we should shut down the other ones and put them in charge? Even little things like sub scheduling and sub list policies cssd is better run.
**I want to be clear here I think CBE central admin is a disaster. There are many, many great teachers who care in CBE, which is all that holds that place together, imo.
This doesn't sound like an argument for having different admin boards though. It's an argument to fix one that sounds pretty broken. If the CBE was the best run board, would you then support consolidation under them?
Yeah. This is why it makes me crazy when people always say we should get rid of charters and catholic schools to save admin costs. The CBE has area principals up the ying-yang, they're easily the worst managed of the 3 groups, so we should shut down the other ones and put them in charge? Even little things like sub scheduling and sub list policies cssd is better run.
**I want to be clear here I think CBE central admin is a disaster. There are many, many great teachers who care in CBE, which is all that holds that place together, imo.
I want to premise this with the fact that you’re absolutely entitled to this opinion and may have more data or experiences to back this thinking up. I work in central office and report directly to system principals and while I agree there are many problems, I also want to say a lot of them are exaggerated by people who know little about what goes on in the Ed Centre. It’s easy to hate on central office when many don’t know what they actually do because much of our work is invisible but necessary.
There aren’t as many area principals as people think. They exist in massive departments that require a liaison to directors, but most departments report directly to directors instead. Having worked in schools and system roles, I can say my department, including the area principals, are easily the strongest educators I’ve ever worked with.
I think the legacy of the Ed Centre, which was signed before I became a teacher, really messed up CBE’s image… especially to teachers in the system. And rightly so! However, most of the senior management involved in that decision has since moved on and most people in central office acknowledge that was a terrible waste of resources. I go to work everyday in a giant physical reminder of the importance of being a responsible public educator.
I’ll say that the pendulum swung so far the other way, because of the Ed Centre debacle, the desire to repair perception have actually caused much of my work to require multiple levels of vetting before approval and this process can be super frustrating. But when I take a moment to breathe and step away from my work for a bit, I actually found that feedback from senior management to be prudent, albeit removed from classroom realities at times. Not saying it’s working and changing anyone’s perspective, but it’s how it is and with CBE being the largest school board in western Canada, it’s going to take a long time to clean this mess up.
Goes to show how public boards, especially one as massive as the CBE, are under the microscope when I comes to fiscal responsibility; and one bad decision could lead to years of mistrust that will require many more years of intentional work to repair. Which is how it should be. I just wish we applied the same standard to our provincial goverment.
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Originally Posted by Hockey Fan #751
The Oilers won't finish 14th in the West forever.
Eventually a couple of expansion teams will be added which will nestle the Oilers into 16th.
Last edited by Point Blank; 10-09-2025 at 11:21 AM.
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Our fearless Education minister is now on record saying class size caps of 22 v 29 has no impact on academic performance. This is actually from the person in charge of education in the province.
Be very afraid for your kids if this doesn't get addressed. So embarrassing this is even out there for all to see from someone our province elected. A car wash attendant knows enough that a 10 bay car wash isn't going to perform well if you cram 15 cars in it....maybe the job will still get done though.
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Last edited by Hot_Flatus; 10-09-2025 at 11:22 AM.
Ive come to the opinion that pay is reasonable, but working conditions aren't. Id support teachers if their strike was solely about raising per capita funding levels without increasing teacher pay. But it's become clear the strike is about both pay and working conditions.
I hope both sides are able to come to a fair and reasonable solution. While the province loses public support and teachers lose pay, the biggest losers are the children.
Minimal tweaks to salary in this offer (the roll out and structure so everyone gets the proposed % increase) and you'd have the majority of teachers sign off today as long as the other critical items like class size caps, educational assistants numbers are actually addressed.
Instead we're being gaslit by elected officials to believe that the half billion churning into private education is inconsequential, and the existing education budget is all their is to work with. In 6 months we'll be hearing about another $4B dollar surplus going who knows where too.
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Call me a socialist, but I don’t think any child should get academic advantages because their parents are well off. Public school for all!
You're a commie and that's not very Berta' of you!
Scary that the idiot Education Minister is now claiming class sizes don't affect student learning when the governments own website actually touts the small class sizes of the publicly subsidized, private board as a huge perk and something to consider.
If parent's want this for their child, that's fine but they can certainly carry the burden of the full cost. Tax dollars should not be making this more affordable for the wealthy and should not be going to schools with no financial transparency requirements!
If this is the road the UCP are going to continue to go down, this is going to get really bad. Even if they are eventually forced back to work by these clowns in charge, it will be work to rule with no extra curriculars for a long time. Teachers aren't backing down on merely getting what every other province has in terms of classroom caps and supports.
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Last edited by Hot_Flatus; 10-09-2025 at 11:41 AM.
Our fearless Education minister is now on record saying class size caps of 22 v 29 has no impact on academic performance. This is actually from the person in charge of education in the province.
Be very afraid for your kids if this doesn't get addressed. So embarrassing this is even out there for all to see from someone our province elected. A car wash attendant knows enough that a 10 bay car wash isn't going to perform well if you cram 15 cars in it....maybe the job will still get done though.
When choosing a private school, parents should consider:
- if the private school is registered, accredited or accredited and eligible for funding by government
- how well parts of the school environment fit the specific needs of your child, such as:
- location
- size - pupil/teacher ratio
So it seems as if Nicolaides doesn’t even know what’s written in his own website. He’s right in that the educational outcomes won’t be a big difference…for stronger students in a classroom. And this is literally all the UCP can ever conceptualize, is how learning affects the strongest students, not the ones that require the most support.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hockey Fan #751
The Oilers won't finish 14th in the West forever.
Eventually a couple of expansion teams will be added which will nestle the Oilers into 16th.
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Minimal tweaks to salary in this offer (the roll out and structure so everyone gets the proposed % increase) and you'd have the majority of teachers sign off today as long as the other critical items like class size caps, educational assistants numbers are actually addressed.
Instead we're being gaslit by elected officials to believe that the half billion churning into private education is inconsequential, and the existing education budget is all their is to work with. In 6 months we'll be hearing about another $4B dollar surplus going who knows where too.
I don’t speak for all teachers, but even no tweaks to the current salary proposal would be 100% fine with me. I don’t even need immediate changes to classroom size and complexity, just a concrete plan on how this will be addressed, like a gradual rollout of classroom caps.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hockey Fan #751
The Oilers won't finish 14th in the West forever.
Eventually a couple of expansion teams will be added which will nestle the Oilers into 16th.
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Not that I don't believe you, but where does the $461mm come from?
It comes from the actual government budget. Instead of trying to napkin math and reverse engineer numbers out of other speculative numbers, just go look at the budget or news articles about the budget. $461M this year, next year they are forecasting $511M and then another $188M after that (it is unclear to me if they are increasing by $188M per year for 2 years or spread out over two years).
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Originally Posted by you&me
In an earlier post (maybe in the other thread), I broke down the math... It's something like 38,000 private school students * $11,464 in per student funding *.70, which comes out to just under $305mm... Everyone seems to accept the $11,464 per student and the 70% funding; maybe the private student enrolment is much higher than the source I'd found, but it's hard to explain a 50+ % discrepancy...
In any case, I still feel my point from my last post stands - $461mm is still a drop in a $10B bucket... If that was eliminated and redirected to public school pupils, it would mean a whopping 6% increase in per student funding, or $658 - still far less than other provinces. And that doesn't account for any redistribution of students back to the public system that would likely occur if funding was dropped and parents had to pay full freight tuition (negating, or offsetting some of those new funding $).
To look at it another way, that would barely cover the 3,000 teachers that gov't keeps harping about, that everyone says is woefully inadequate, especially without having somewhere to put them... 1, 2 maybe 3 teachers per school in the province. Peanuts. Bupkis. Nothin'.
And while railing against the elite seems to be some on CP's favourite past time, let's not forget that not all private schools are gilded palaces for rich kids - many serve niches such as student athletes or those with learning disabilities.
Now all that said, I'm not arguing that what the UCP is doing to education in Alberta isn't atrocious... but again, I've said this before - what's ####ing new? Classes were over crowded when I was a student 30 years ago; we were jammed into portables, or bussed across the city.
$461M is just the starting point. The government also gives grants to private schools that are hidden in other line items. The amount of public money that gets served up to benefit a small number of kids is absurd. The number of kids in the private school system is a drop in the bucket and should not be funded by the public sector. (yes, I flipped your drop in the bucket phrase back to you but with it being about the number of kids instead of the number of dollars)
Quote:
Originally Posted by you&me
To no one's surprise, this is the main reason my kids go to private school. The learning environment was pretty #### when I went to school and there's been zero progress made to address the shortcomings, which have only been exacerbated by further decades of neglectful budgets, lack of investment and a booming population. I wish this weren't the case. I wish public schools provided a reliable level of service and education that made me comfortable with sending my kids. My wallet sure as #### agrees. And I recognize that I'm beyond fortunate to be able to provide an alternative to my kids. But I also pay into the same system as everyone else. At the very least, I appreciate getting (nearly) the same back out of the system as everyone else (yeah, yeah, the childless pay in too - don't worry, you'll make it back from the taxes paid by my offspring).
At the end of the day, we don't have a $300mm, or a $461mm problem and that amount isn't going to make a dent in - let alone fix - public education in Alberta. It is a multi-billion dollar, multi (multi) year problem and worst of all, it's one we could afford to fix if the leadership (ewww, feels gross using that word to describe what the UCP does) of this province would actually, you know, do something about it.
You prove my point. The gap between where the public education system is and where it is supposed to be (one of the best education systems in the world) is massive. The conservatives are perpetually trying to drive more and more families into the private school system so that they can formalize a strategy where they have a "rich educated class" and a "poor dumb class" within our society.
The things holding back Alberta public education:
- Alberta funds the education system the least out of Canada
- Alberta pays the most to private schools out of anywhere in Canada
- Alberta is the only province to pay for Charter schools
- Alberta is one of the few provinces to continue to pay for Catholic schools
We do not need to fix just one or two of these things to get back on track. The UCP has made the problem so extreme that the solution likely needs to be a resolution of all of these issues that are diminishing the public school system.
When you think about the "Alberta Advantage" what do you think the description of our education system should be?
Flipping the above list on it's head, I would want to see this:
- Alberta funds the education system the most out of Canada (even more than Quebec!!!)
- Alberta's school boards are the best run in the country and their teachers are the best paid (teachers move to Alberta to get jobs)
- The Alberta curriculum is the most progressive and most advanced in the world, building the most productive and engaged citizens of the future
- Alberta's public school system is so robust and diverse that it has specialized learning tracks to accommodate all kids that do not fit into a regular classroom and that all kids are given the best support to succeed
- Alberta's public school system has innovative schools that create new teaching methods to maintain the bleeding edge of education and those learnings are all funneled back into the primary system to advance all kids
Again, I understand your desire to be protective of private schools because your kids are in them, but you need to acknowledge that having a multi-tiered education system is bull#### and having any money at all being diverted when the larger system is failing is poor financial management.
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Call me a socialist, but I don’t think any child should get academic advantages because their parents are well off. Public school for all!
that is fine but then more funding, more taxes, sort of at the will of the government, it would have to be a federal level, not provincial, too much variance.
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Our fearless Education minister is now on record saying class size caps of 22 v 29 has no impact on academic performance. This is actually from the person in charge of education in the province.
Be very afraid for your kids if this doesn't get addressed. So embarrassing this is even out there for all to see from someone our province elected. A car wash attendant knows enough that a 10 bay car wash isn't going to perform well if you cram 15 cars in it....maybe the job will still get done though.
Longer video by Lisa today. Worth watching if you need to spit some venom at the UCP but also has some good
She is literally playing out the conversation we are having in this topic here. However, she does a bit more research beyond our talking and points out how the private schools lobby the politicians and get access to the government that normal schools are not allowed to have.
Worth a watch for anyone wrapping their head around this strike situation.
Location: In my office, at the Ministry of Awesome!
Exp:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolven
CBC asks the question to an expert:
Of course class sizes have no impact on student outcomes.
Everyone knows that teachers are able to devote exactly as much time to each student in a room with 20 children as in a room with 40 children.
And besides, even if that wasn't true, it is well known that the amount 1 one 1 instruction a student receives does not affect their academic performance.
This is why private tutors traditionally teach large groups of children at once.
Also, I'm pretty sure class size caps are woke, or turn kids trans or something.
Honestly, I don't know how anyone can support teachers in this.
The government is clearly dealing in good faith, and definitely not lying about facts that are plainly obvious.
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