Teachers withdrawing noon-hour supervision Thursday in Saskatoon, Regina

The Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation (STF) announced Monday that educators will not provide lunch-hour supervision at schools in a number of divisions Thursday.

Those include schools in the Regina Public, Regina Catholic, Saskatoon Public, Greater Saskatoon Catholic, Chinook, Holy Family Catholic, North East and Prairie Spirit school divisions, as well as all conseil des écoles fransaskoise schools.

The withdrawal of lunch-hour supervision is the latest in a series of sanctions imposed by the STF during stalled contract negotiations with the provincial government.

The latest job action follows the withdrawal of supervision of extracurricular activities provincewide on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and a one-day withdrawal of lunch-hour supervision Monday at schools in the Creighton, Holy Trinity Catholic, Horizon, Lloydminster Public, Lloydminster Catholic, Northwest, Prairie South, Prairie Valley, Saskatchewan Rivers and Prince Albert Catholic school divisions.

On Thursday, teachers won’t be available to supervise students who eat lunch at school or take part in noon-hour activities.

“Although teachers, including principals and vice-principals, often provide lunch break supervision, it is done on a voluntary basis,” the teachers’ federation said in a release.

“Student supervision is the responsibility of the school division and supervisors are not required to be teachers.”

The teachers’ union and the province continue to spar over a number of issues during the dispute, most notably class size and classroom complexity.

The teachers want those issues included in the next collective bargaining agreement, but the government and the Saskatchewan School Boards Association (SSBA) say that won’t happen.

Last Wednesday, Premier Scott Moe announced the education portion of the upcoming budget will rise to $2.2 billion, an increase of $180 million over last year’s total. The budget is to include more than $356 million that has been specifically allocated to classroom supports.

On Friday, the province and the SSBA revealed they had signed a multi-year agreement to guarantee a base amount of $356.6 million for classroom supports each year over the next four years.

The STF responded by saying the deal was presented to school board trustees with only 24 hours to consider whether the agreement would be endorsed or not.

“It seems that government and SSBA leadership painted a picture to local trustees that gave them no other option (than) to accept this backdoor agreement,” union president Samantha Becotte told reporters.

Education minister discusses new funding

Education Minister Jeremy Cockrill spoke Monday with Evan Bray about the government’s recent funding announcements and explained what that money would be put toward.

“Within that ($180 million), we’re going to fully fund the teachers’ budget wherever that lands, we’re going to fund enrolment growth and we’re also going to be funding additional classroom support,” Cockrill said.

“We want to make sure that school divisions are resourced so that they can deal with these issues and staff appropriately in their schools, and I think this is a really good step in that direction.”

The $180-million increase is part of the education budget. The multi-year funding agreement with the SSBA differs.

Cockrill said that deal provides funding for classroom supports.

“That’s the support for learning funding,” he said. “That’s the (educational assistant) funding that we have that has hired almost 1,000 more EAs over the last several years in this province as well as the pilot program.

“So the multi-year agreement that we worked on with school divisions and signed with them late last week is really focused on the classroom support funding and providing some predictability and baseline predictability over the next four years.”