Rally for Alberta educators hits streets of Strathmore

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Educators, students, parents, support staff, among others rallied in Strathmore on Oct. 10 in support of the teachers’ strike taking place province-wide. 

Teachers went on strike, Oct. 6, calling for better wages, smaller class sizes, and more support for the public education system in Alberta. 

“It’s an event that I wish that we did not have to hold – that we could have made rational arguments that would have ultimately avoided the situation that we are in now,” said Michael Robertson, local president for Three Drums of Wheat, the bargaining unit in Golden Hills School Division. “Many of these issues are decades old … we have tried for years to advocate for these various issues to try and avoid the problems that we were seeing in front of us day after day.”

Robertson emphasized striking to be the last possible option considered by educators. The hope was to be able to resolve concerns at the bargaining table before pulling the ripcord. 

He described that the general consensus is that Alberta’s public curriculum has been politicized, and any advice from people on the ground, and professionals in the field has resulted in the province doing exactly the opposite.

“It became very clear that the province had very little interest in listening to what the actual issues were. It is very frustrating to try to give rational argumentation all the time, and to have it ignored,” he said. “The breaking point has been a slow march towards this eventuality. Ultimately, the mediator’s report and proposed agreement, when the concerns were shared around that, the province did not even want to do those things, and it was proposing a significantly lower increase in funding and in salaries and not addressing a bunch of the issues including class size and complexity.”

Robertson explained educators should not have to be asking the province to hire more educational assistants, nor to pay them acceptable, living wages. 

The most recent data made available by Stats Canada covers the 2022-23 school year. The national average school board operating expenditure is $13,692 per student. Alberta ranks squarely the lowest in the country, sitting at $11,464 per student. 

This has been shown to be the case since 2018, with the gap between Alberta’s spending on students and the national average continuing to grow. In 2018, the gap was 11 per cent below the national average. Now, with the most recent Stats Canada data, it is 16 per cent below.

Regarding teacher compensation, which is broken down by how many students they teach, it is shown to sit at $8,202 per student. According to Stats Canada, Alberta is currently 10th in the country in this regard, sitting nearly $1,600 below the national average. 

Alberta has been shown to be below the national average in teacher compensation for the last 13 years.

Where Alberta soars above the national average, is the ratio of students per teacher. While the national average is approximately 12 students per teacher, Alberta sits at approximately 17. This metric includes classroom instructors, school administrators, and pedagogical support staff being referred to as “teachers” in this instance.

“They hand down mandates, they hand down all of what the funding is, and then the school boards are forced into a position of trying to figure out how to accomplish it all … to say that they are being funded adequately is highly inaccurate,” said Robertson. “They blame the people at the bottom for not being able to do what they are not willing to fund and support. They are implementing curriculums without resources, without proper consultation and without proper review.”

Heather McCaig, a teacher who attended the rally in Strathmore, added class sizes and resources within schools have become unmanageable, to say the least.

“All teachers in Alberta are looking for more supports in their classrooms. We have more complex needs than we have ever seen in history,” she said. “We have not been funded to have the supports that we need … we need to have the extra supports available in our buildings to ensure that every student’s needs are met, and one teacher cannot do it in a classroom alone anymore.”

She added teachers in Alberta have not observed significant wage increases in over a decade and have effectively lost nearly 35 per cent of their buying power. 

“We need to get something reasonable to help us get back to a decent standard of living when it comes to keeping up with inflation,” said McCaig.

She reported approximately 500 people rallied in Strathmore alone for Friday’s event. Immediately following, a similar rally took place in Brooks.

Educators returned to the bargaining table with the Province on Tuesday, Oct. 14 to resume negotiations.