Back-to-school: Vaccinations, portables, and teachers without a contract
Credit to Author: Lori Culbert| Date: Sat, 07 Sep 2019 10:00:12 +0000
When the first bell rang Tuesday morning, students entered a school year that promises new curriculum and policies, ongoing battles over portables and teacher shortages, and the looming uncertainty of labour unrest.
Top of mind for many parents this September will likely be the stalled bargaining between the province and the teachers’ union, after the teachers’ contract expired in June. The negotiations will resume in two weeks and both sides insist there are no immediate plans for picket lines to close classrooms.
“No vote on job actions has been authorized at this time,” B.C. Teachers Federation president Teri Mooring said after talks broke down a week ago.
One major change for B.C.’s 546,000 school-age students will be the final rollout of the province’s new curriculum, which was introduced three years ago to the youngest kids and has now been expanded to Grades 11 and 12. Seniors students will have more courses to choose from, and far fewer exams.
This is also the first year that schools must put free menstrual products in bathrooms, and that parents are required to report their children’s vaccinations, a new policy that came into effect after last year’s measles scare.
“This is not really to identify people who do not have immunized children, or who are not immunized themselves, and give them a hard time. This is about operating our health care system in an effective way,” said Dr. Manish Sadarangani, director of the Vaccine Evaluation Centre at B.C. Children’s Hospital.
Some of the key issues facing students in 2019-20 are repetitions of previous years — most notably the ongoing shortage of teachers in at least two-thirds of the province’s 60 districts.
“I hear regularly from districts that they are meeting or have met their hiring requirements, but we know that there are some shortages that will continue, particularly in rural and in some cases northern school districts,” Education Minister Rob Fleming said. “We are making progress and we will continue to look for opportunities to improve.”
But Mooring countered that few, if any, of the districts have enough substitute teachers, and claimed more and more uncertified teachers are employed by schools unable to hire someone with education training.
And in Surrey, B.C.’s fastest-growing district, students were greeted by even more portables this year, despite the NDP’s campaign promise to reduce temporary classrooms in that city.
“We are in a state of crisis and it only seems to be getting worse for us with the amount of families who keep moving out here,” said Surrey mother Rina Diaz, who has two daughters attending overcapacity schools.
B.C.’s K to 12 system got bigger this year, with an extra 3,155 children — nearly double the number of new kids who enrolled last September. Surrey, Chilliwack, Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows and Langley all gained hundreds of new students; enrolment was down in other districts, including Vancouver, North Vancouver, West Vancouver and Sea-to-Sky (Squamish).
Here’s a look at what parents and students need to know, now that classes have begun:
B.C. still needs to hire more teachers, mostly due to the 2016 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that restored class size and composition language the previous Liberal government had improperly stripped from teacher contracts.
In Surrey, which has averaged 1,000 new students annually for the past few years, the shortage of teachers has been keenly felt.
Matt Westphal, President of the Surrey Teachers Association. Photo: Gerry Kahrmann/Postmedia
“It has been a challenge, because there were some positions that never did get filled last year; they essentially gave up on certain specialist positions. There were some classes that never did have their own teacher,” said Matt Westphal, president of the Surrey Teachers Association, who added the teacher-on-call lists also remain depleted.
“There have been some days where there were over 100 teachers who have been sick or absent and they were not replaced.“
Surrey district spokesman Doug Strachan, though, said the board is confident it has sufficient staffing this September and is constantly recruiting to keep its employee numbers up.
“Every year it is a challenge, particularly to hire and recruit the specialist positions, like French immersion, counsellors, special education,” he said. “(But) we will start the year ready to go.”
As of Friday, the province’s website that advertises teacher positions still had 500 postings for jobs in the public K to 12 system, and that grew to 600 when independent and First Nations schools were included. Those postings represent even more teacher vacancies because some are for multiple positions: for example, one says resource teachers are needed for “multiple locations” in Mission, while another is looking for trades teachers at “all secondary schools” in Surrey.
This time last year there were also 600 postings, and that number was whittled down to 400 by December.
Education Minister Rob Fleming argues the province has spent more than $400 million to hire almost 4,000 new teachers since the court ruling. More than 900 teachers were recruited from outside the province, including 70 French-speaking teachers from France and Belgium, he said.
“We are moving in a positive direction. Anecdotally we are starting to see school districts have some success with … more acute areas of shortages around French immersion teachers, for example,” Fleming said.
Vancouver and other school districts have boosted substitute teacher numbers through unique initiatives, such as offering a guaranteed number of shifts per week or improved seniority benefits, he added.
Teri Mooring outside BCTF headquarters in Vancouver. Photo: B.C. Teachers’ Federation
The B.C. Teachers Federation, though, argues 1,500 new people need to be hired just to meet current needs. That’s due, in part they say, to the fact that so many current teachers-on-call are retirees and because the province has increasingly hired people without teaching credentials for tough-to-fill posts.
Vulnerable children can be the hardest hit, Mooring said, because resource teachers are often redirected to replace absent colleagues and sometimes there are too many kids with special-needs designations per classroom.
“We anticipate the exact same issues this year as we had last year,” she predicted.
Many rural or northern districts, where it can be harder to recruit teachers, have high numbers of postings in areas such as Nechako Lakes, Prince George and Peace River South.
There are also urban boards with a sizable number of openings. Some, such as North Vancouver, Vancouver and West Vancouver, may be losing teachers because of the high cost of housing, while other districts are likely scrambling to hire more teachers because they are growing, including Chilliwack, Delta, Langley and Sooke.
On Friday, nearly all the high schools in North Vancouver still had openings for at least one teacher, for classes such as social studies at Sutherland, home economics at Argyle, physical education at Seycove, woodwork at Windsor, and math and English at Mountainside.
There are openings in many districts for specialist positions, such as learning-support and resource teachers, speech pathologists, librarians, and counsellors.
French teachers are in demand across the province. In fact, one out of every six teacher-job postings mentions the word French.
Salaries, along with classroom size and composition, were key issues at the bargaining table between the government and the teachers’ union during contract negotiations. Although both sides had hoped to reach a deal before classes began, the mediator indicated a week ago they were too far apart on major issues and suggested a break.
Talks are to resume Sept. 23, which means the first three weeks of school will be under a cloud of labour uncertainty.
“We had hoped, with a new government, that we wouldn’t be in the same position where we’re month-to-month at the table and then a mediator, but that’s where we’re at,” Mooring said earlier this week.
A major sticking point for the union is the allegation that the government’s proposals are “rolling back” the gains made in the court ruling, including provisions on class size and composition.
When you table total deletion of everything #bced teachers won back in the Supreme Court of Canada, you shouldn't be surprised. This #bcpoli government promised better, parents and teachers expected better, and kids deserve better. We can't go backwards. Nobody voted for that. https://t.co/Vy4HKusetm
The union also wants improvements to wages, Mooring said, noting it is difficult to recruit when teacher salaries in this expensive province are the second lowest in Canada.
Both sides are hesitant to reveal precise bargaining details, but Fleming has maintained during interviews this week that the government’s offer is similar to recent contracts signed by other public sector unions.
He downplayed concerns about a repetition of a 2014 provincewide teachers’ strike that had students out of class for five weeks after the previous Liberal government imposed a partial lockout.
“We are in a vastly different place than where we were in 2014, which was the most disruptive, damaging schoolwork stoppage we’ve seen in British Columbia in decades,” Fleming said.
Rather, he argued, his NDP administration supports education and has increased funding by $1 billion annually.
A significant chunk of the NDP cash flow is going to Surrey, to build desperately needed new schools. But the construction takes time, and parents who have watched their children spend year after year in portables are tired of waiting.
The NDP promised in the provincial election to eliminate portables in that fast-growing city by 2021. Instead, it is adding 28 new portables this year, bringing the total to 361 temporary buildings that will house approximately 7,000 students.
Two years from now, the district predicts eight new school buildings or additions will create space for 4,500 students, but it won’t be enough to fulfil that campaign pledge to eliminate all portables.
“I think in the year 2021, we’ll see reductions” of portables, said Strachan, the district spokesman. “Bear with us — we certainly share the same frustrations — but it is the time it takes to get (schools) built.”
Rina Diaz and her daughters Yesenia Sandoval (left) and Alexia Sandoval at the portables behind Frank Hurt Secondary in Surrey. Photo: Gerry Kahrmann/Postmedia
That is frustrating to Diaz, president of the Surrey District Parent Advisory Council, whose oldest daughter was taught in temporary classrooms at Frank Hurt Secondary.
“In the winter months it was so cold, I would send her with extra jackets,” she said.
Diaz would like to see the province and school district tackling this issue with more urgency. Fleming countered that his government is working hard “to finally catch up and get rid of portables, but it’s hard — it’s hard work after years of neglect.”
Westphal, the Surrey Teachers’ Association president, said government should change its policy to only construct new schools when classrooms are overflowing, rather than building early based on growth projections.
“There have been schools where on opening day they already have portables,” he said. “Having thousands of students spend potentially their whole school careers in portables is a failure in planning.”
The education ministry could not say which other boards are adding portables, or how many new ones are popping up across B.C.
However, North Vancouver District has added one new portable to Queen Mary Elementary. It and nearby Ridgeway Elementary are far over capacity because of a construction boom in the Lower Lonsdale area.
Dr. Manish Sadarangani, director of the Vaccine Evaluation Centre at B.C. Children’s Hospital.
New for this school year is a requirement for parents to provide public health units with their children’s immunization records, a move that comes in response to a measles outbreak last February.
Students who are behind on their needles will not be banned from attending school. But their parents will be contacted to discuss any concerns they have and will be told about local clinics where they can get the vaccinations updated.
“Children transmit germs to each other very readily, very easily,” said Sadarangani, the pediatric vaccination expert. “Education is a place where a lot of infections do spread.”
The response to this year’s measles outbreak could have been faster had officials had a better understanding of who wasn’t vaccinated, and therefore he is a fan of the mandatory reporting for youth in schools.
Encouraging the highest rate of immunization possible will also protect those children who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons. “It’s partly for the protection of the kids themselves, but it is also partly a community responsibility,” Sadarangani said.
This fall, health officials will be contacting only those parents with missing vaccinations. “Our hope is that most parents coming back into the school system would have absolutely nothing to do,” Fleming said.
Before the end of September, parents should be able to check their children’s vaccination records at immunizebc.ca.
Other provinces, such as Ontario, have gone a step farther than B.C. by making it mandatory for students to be immunized against certain diseases, including measles, mumps, meningococcal disease, and whooping cough, before they can attend school.
Also this fall, a free supply of pads and tampons are to be available in the bathrooms of schools across the province.
The province announced in April that every school district had until December to comply. The education ministry is contacting all districts to track progress, and says so far it appears at least one third is now offering the free supplies.
Tracy Humphreys with her son Max.
Parents of special needs children have repeatedly complained there are not enough supports for these vulnerable students, and that the situation is made worse by a shortage of support workers and teachers.
An advocacy group, BCEdAccess Society, conducted a survey that found 3,610 incidents of children with disabilities being excluded from schools in every district across B.C. in 2018/19. Among the incidents recorded, the children were asked not to attend on the first few days of school; only allowed to come for two hours a day; told to stay home until an educational assistant was found; and not able to attend field trips or take part in extracurricular activities.
Tracy Humphreys, the society’s founder, called on every district to ensure “all students are able to attend school on the first day, to attend full days, and to be meaningfully included in educational and social opportunities.”
There are more than 73,000 students with designated special needs this year — 3,422 more than in September 2018.
Fleming said he was disturbed to hear that some kids are told they should stay home, and noted “that shouldn’t be happening.” He said the NDP government has taken action by working with advocates for special needs learners, increasing the number of classrooms with educational assistants, and boosting the overall special needs funding.
He announced this week $8.9 million for grants to all school districts and independent schools to support students with mental health and substance-use challenges.
“There are many excellent examples of inclusive schools right here in B.C.,” said parent Nicole Kaler, a BCEdAccess member. “(But) we must have adequate, qualified staff in schools.”
Next Saturday: An in-depth look at how B.C.’s curriculum will change this year, especially for Grade 11 and 12 students.
Twitter: @loriculbert
With a file from Canadian Press