Province pushing Saskatchewan teachers’ union to sign MOU

Nearly a week after he announced he’d be open to an accountability framework on classroom support money, Saskatchewan Education Minister Jeremy Cockrill announced the province’s teachers’ union, the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation (STF), had yet to sign the MOU.

On Thursday morning, Cockrill said the government was willing to sign the Memorandum of Understanding that day, but he noted the STF had said it wouldn’t sign unless the framework was in the teachers’ contract.

The government and the STF have been at an impasse in contract negotiations since October.

Cockrill has said many times — and he reiterated it Thursday — that the government will not agree to classroom size and complexity being in the contract.

But Cockrill argued that if those issues were in the contract, it would take away management rights from local divisions in deciding what’s best for their communities, and would give teachers say over divisions hiring and dealing with members of other unions, which Cockrill said isn’t right.

He’s advocating for things to be dealt with at the local level.

“That’s really where we think these discussions are best had — with local teachers with their local school divisions — in terms of how these supports for learning dollars are allocated within the classrooms,” said Cockrill.

The MOU would provide for accountability frameworks to be developed by each individual school division with their teachers.

The MOU says divisions would have to engage with local teacher associations to make sure it’s considering teachers’ voices in the allocation of classroom support money. The divisions would report to the ministry how it intends to use the support money, through the budget approval process. And divisions will add to their annual reports what supports were used for.

However the MOU also said that teachers’ associations wouldn’t hold any decision-making authority in the context of the agreement, dispute resolution mechanisms wouldn’t be available, and activities under the agreement would not be allowed to delay school budgets.

“What this framework would do (is) it would establish a formal expectation between the government and SSBA (Saskatchewan School Boards Association) and school divisions and the STF that this framework exists, and be clear in communication with schools’ staff on how they can participate in that accountability process,” explained Cockrill.

In presenting his argument, Cockrill said the government has met a series of demands from the teachers’ union and every time the teachers move the goalposts further, though the expectation that class size and complexity be within the contract has long been a sticking point for the STF.

STF president Samantha Becotte said she’s cautiously optimistic over the prospect of the MOU.

“I thank the minister of education for coming up with a great start to help us move towards a solution,” said Becotte.

Becotte said the union is ready to talk through the weekend to try to get to an agreement and, as such, could be back to the bargaining table as early as next week.

She was happy to hear Cockrill acknowledge that teachers’ voices are an important part of the decision-making process and appreciated the opportunity to have had the back and forth over this with the government.

“That’s really what negotiation should be. We should have been having these back-and-forth conversations anytime over the last 10 months and we would have, potentially, been able to avoid any sanction action,” said Becotte.

Becotte did say there needs to be a way for the framework to be binding.

“There needs to be a way to have a dispute resolution, if one party of the agreement doesn’t uphold the actions that were agreed to. If there’s no dispute resolution, then it’s no more than a pinky promise made amongst two people on a school playground,” she said.

The teachers have been levying sanctions against the government, including rotating strikes and withholding lunch-hour supervision and supervision of extracurricular activities.

Cockrill threw some accusations at the STF, and Becotte took the opportunity to defend the union, saying teachers have never wanted to control funding, and that they’ve done everything they can to come to an agreement with the least impact to students and families.

“We should have never been forced to take these steps or have had any sanction action. The conversations that are occurring now should have been happening over the last 10 months and if they had happened six months ago or back in May when we started negotiations, we would have never come to this point of needing sanction action,” said Becotte.

There aren’t any specifics about what the division-level agreements would look like, but Cockrill said they would want teachers to sign the MOU first and then they would start drilling down.

But the MOU doesn’t include minimums or backstops for how the support money needs to be used. When Cockrill was asked about class sizes, he claimed what’s reasonable would look different depending on the division.

SSBA president Jaimie Smith-Windsor said accountability is the core business of boards of education and the boards do a good job of making sure decision-making is student-centred.

“That idea of collaboration is fundamental to how we do education in Saskatchewan. Our ability and our willingness to come together and collaborate as partners in education is conducive to high-quality education,” said Smith-Windsor.

“Compliance and dispute – those don’t sound like the kind of future we envision as school boards when we’re trying to deliver education.”

However, in her answers, it didn’t appear school divisions would be interested in any articles that would bind divisions to any requirements.

Becotte said if boards don’t think they should be compliant to their own decision-making  is a big red flag.

“Accountability is the willingness to accept responsibility for the decisions that are being made, and there should be no issue with there being the words ‘compliance’ or ‘dispute’ within that accountability framework,” she said.

However, in her answers, it didn’t appear school divisions would be interested in any articles that would bind divisions to any requirements.