Premier Christy Clark is quoted as saying “there are no easy fixes” in the current teachers’ dispute with the government. That is totally false.
The easy fix is to properly fund our public education system to the national average and stop funnelling off public funds to pay for private schooling for the privileged.
Her assertion that teachers should go back to classes while “negotiations” continue would be laughable if it weren’t so serious. She knows full well the BCTF had tried repeatedly over the summer to get negotiations happening only to be allowed one day to negotiate. The rest of the days were “exploratory” in nature, not negotiating.
Negotiations are about give and take. The BCTF has backed up three times now and the government has brought no new funding to the table in order to address class size and composition. The government keeps insisting that teachers have to take what other public sector unions have.
The public needs to be aware that teachers’ wages in B.C. are thousands of dollars per month less than their counterparts in other parts of Canada, while this disparity is not so great with other public sector unions.
Arlene Laing, Surrey
