Maybe it’s because children are small they can so easily be mistaken for pawns by players looming above them like a pair of chess grandmasters.
Late last week, the latest move was made in a 15-year labour saga between the B.C. Teachers’ Federation and the provincial Liberal government when the parties announced they had reached a tentative collective agreement.
Good news, certainly. BCTF president Glen Hansman cheered the likelihood — pending ratification — of more teachers, more support staff and smaller ratios of teachers to students.
And Minister of Education Mike Bernier weighed in with happy talk from the government, as well.
“If ratified, (the agreement) will build on the $100 million for up to 1,100 new teachers announced in January’s interim agreement with the BCTF and the record funding increase we just announced in the budget,” Bernier said.
Really? An advertisement? What is this, an election year?
The agreement, which goes before the BCTF membership this week for ratification, follows negotiations mandated by a Supreme Court of Canada decision handed down last November.
That court ruling backed the teachers in their lawsuit against a government that has had 15 years to sprinkle around a bit of that “record funding”, but that has instead opted to devote taxpayer dollars (and they’re not saying how many) to battling the teachers.
Further, over the past three years, when an election was not visible over the horizon, the government has dinged the province’s school district for millions in mandated “administrative cost savings” — i.e., budget cuts.
The province may now be crowing about it magnanimity, Norberta Heinrichs, president of the local Mount Arrowsmith Teachers’ Association, recognized this sudden loosening of purse strings as “random acts of funding” during the most recent School District 69 board meeting.
Look, this isn’t to tell you who gets to be the white pieces and who represents the black when the board is reset for the provincial election this May.
All governments have their share of detractors. The B.C. Liberals may be cheered for their role in the dispute with the BCTF over the past 15 years, or panned. Or voters may not rate the issue as critical to their vote at all.
Either way, those voters will ultimately decide which pieces will be removed from the board.
— Editorial by J.R. Rardon
