Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[malcolmk14]

The Parent Support Payment System

In the event of a teacher strike, the Government of Alberta will give $30/day per child to parents of children 12 and under.

Payments will be made monthly starting October 31st, retroactive to October 6th.

Sounds like maybe this government thinks a teacher strike may last a while.

[Looch City]

There's just no money left you see. We can't possibly fund education or healthcare any more!

[Slava]

Originally Posted by malcolmk14

The Parent Support Payment System

In the event of a teacher strike, the Government of Alberta will give $30/day per child to parents of children 12 and under.

Payments will be made monthly starting October 31st, retroactive to October 6th.

Sounds like maybe this government thinks a teacher strike may last a while.

This is actually hilariously dumb. We have something like 80,000 kids in K-6. So, the government is going to spend $2.4 million a day on this? Great policy.

[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?

[malcolmk14]

Originally Posted by Slava

This is actually hilariously dumb. We have something like 80,000 kids in K-6. So, the government is going to spend $2.4 million a day on this? Great policy.

That number is closer to 350,000

So they'll spend $10.5 million a day on this.

[ooogabooga]

Originally Posted by malcolmk14

That number is closer to 350,000

So they'll spend $10.5 million a day on this.

But, we can't fund education to even the Canadian average? Rough back of the napkin math here but at that rate, if a strike goes on for 20 days we'll have spent $210 million dollars on this. But could not give that to fund education to Canadian averages, or hire support staff, or pay the teachers adequately to account for inflation?

[malcolmk14]

Originally Posted by ooogabooga

But, we can't fund education to even the Canadian average? Rough back of the napkin math here but at that rate, if a strike goes on for 20 days we'll have spent $210 million dollars on this. But could not give that to fund education to Canadian averages, or hire support staff, or pay the teachers adequately to account for inflation?

Their argument will be that with schools closed they are saving the money that they otherwise would've sent to schools, so they'll give it directly to parents instead.

The beginnings of a voucher system.

[Sylvanfan]

Originally Posted by malcolmk14

The Parent Support Payment System

In the event of a teacher strike, the Government of Alberta will give $30/day per child to parents of children 12 and under.

Payments will be made monthly starting October 31st, retroactive to October 6th.

Sounds like maybe this government thinks a teacher strike may last a while.

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.

[malcolmk14]

Yeah, if I were in their position and thinking like them, I'd try to starve teachers out and go back with the same deal (or worse) in a few weeks.

[surferguy]

Just spit balling ideas - has anybody stepped up to make signs for lawns for us to purchase that shows our support for teachers?

Perhaps a run of signs sold for x amount with proceeds donated back to the ATA??

Thoughts

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by malcolmk14

The Parent Support Payment System

In the event of a teacher strike, the Government of Alberta will give $30/day per child to parents of children 12 and under.

Payments will be made monthly starting October 31st, retroactive to October 6th.

Sounds like maybe this government thinks a teacher strike may last a while.

Any reporting of this? Is this real or just rumor?

[Wolven]

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.

Don't give the money to the school, give it to your teacher(s). Wait for Xmas or year end and put the cash into an envelop and hand it to your teacher with a note saying "Thank you".

Not only would you be supporting your teachers in the most direct way possible (especially if this strike drags on) but you would also be sticking it to the UCP by doing the one thing they seem intent not to do - giving the money to teachers.

[Sylvanfan]

Originally Posted by malcolmk14

That number is closer to 350,000

So they'll spend $10.5 million a day on this.

I thought 81,000 seemed pretty light if there are in fact 51,000 teachers.

Even 350 seems pretty light as that should be close to half the kids in the school system. Maybe even more since the millennial's who have kids would be younger and its a larger cohort than the Gen X where I fall.

[malcolmk14]

Originally Posted by Regorium

Any reporting of this? Is this real or just rumor?

YourAlberta posted it to their YouTube about an hour ago and has since made the video private. I imagine this is part of Danielle Smith's announcement at 12 today.

[Amethyst]

Originally Posted by malcolmk14

The Parent Support Payment System

In the event of a teacher strike, the Government of Alberta will give $30/day per child to parents of children 12 and under.

Payments will be made monthly starting October 31st, retroactive to October 6th.

Sounds like maybe this government thinks a teacher strike may last a while.

Sounds like maybe they want it to last awhile.

[MrButtons]

Originally Posted by GullFoss

The more I think about it, its a darn good offer by the province. If this went to binding arbitration after a two week strike, I would envision the arbitrator imposing this exact deal.

In addition to this, the ATA has basically little to no money. The reason they waited until October 6 to strike is so that teachers could collect a paycheck lmao. How long is that going to last? A month at best?

Just take the offer, say you did it for the kids, talk #### about the UPC and live to fight another day. This isn't the hill to die on.

Genuine Q here - but what would the appropriate hill to die on be? I feel like this would be exactly where you want to fight, not just about income but about how the education system is ran.

[MrButtons]

Originally Posted by CFO

Naw. But I do think there needs to be reform. Example. Eligible vendors to purchase from are typically 2-3x more then going outside the vendor list. Or the other year a portable at my one kids school was removed. To be brought back the next year. The admin/management level in the school boards are meh.

I do agree that the portable situation sucks but I don't want to lie it solely on the feet of the boards.
When done correctly, the government can be quite effective in organizing temporary classrooms in conjunction with the school boards. Ontario does it very well, BC is pretty good too. Several years ago, the province put this under the arm of Alberta infrastructure which in theory makes sense. But the view that infrastructure has is much longer than what portables are used for. Plus, you ask school boards to act as GCs for the installation of the portables, work with contractors on cost estimates. It's just silly to me to have such an inefficient system,

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by Amethyst

Sounds like maybe they want it to last awhile.

It sounds like they want to stop offering education as a government service and continue to skyrocket the costs on the people of Alberta by only having private schools. Only the rich will get educated and everyone else will not.

[Harry Lime]

I don't want my tax money going to purveyors of spawn, just because the government lacks negotiating ability. Screw that! Danielle, you lost my vote!

[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?