About 20 full-time teachers on permanent contracts recently received notice the Battle River school division superintendent is recommending their jobs be terminated, Alberta Teachers’ Association officials said this weekend.
The notices went out approximately a week and a half ago to teachers across the public school division located east of Edmonton. The division encompasses more than 30 schools with approximately 6,500 students throughout the city and County of Camrose, the County of Beaver and the County of Flagstaff.
“They are indicating to us that it’s a financial decision due to lack of financial resources,” said Brian Andrais, the ATA’s co-ordinator of member services.
Teachers at various points in their careers got the notices, he added. “We have some in the early part of their career, mid-career and latter part of their career like 30-plus years. So it was a huge cross-section of teachers receiving these.”
The ATA will support numerous teachers who are appealing the decisions in front of the school board in a bid to keep their full-time, continuous contracts, Andrais said. School trustees can uphold or reject the superintendent’s termination recommendation, he explained.
“We had termination hearings scheduled from Wednesday to Friday of this coming week,” Andrais said in an interview on the weekend. “They have postponed those hearings. As well, we know that some teachers who received notice of recommendation of termination have been offered other positions in the district … I believe five teachers have been offered another position.”
The president of Battle River Local No. 32 of the ATA said a total of 34 of the division’s 385 full-time equivalent teachers are designated to be cut. About 14 of those full-time positions are filled by teachers with temporary and probationary contracts, who are normally the first to lose jobs when cuts are made, said Jeff Myck.
“I guess the bigger issue was the fact that teachers on continuous contracts were given notices,” said Myck, who emphasized he takes all teacher terminations seriously. “They’re trying to get rid of tenured teachers … These teachers have been in the communities for upwards of 20, 30 years, and now it’s being said, “˜We have no job for you.’”
Camrose Composite High School teacher David Andreassen said Sunday three of his colleagues received the notices. There is “no coherent pattern” to who has received notices across the division, said Andreassen, an English teacher.
“There is one lady, not at our school, with nearly 30 years of absolutely exemplary service who has received the termination notice,” he said.
“It’s been nothing short of devastating. I have been teaching for more than 30 years myself. We had the salary rollbacks of the early “˜90s, we had the strike when we were ordered back to work quite punitively and then this. In my 30-plus years, this is the lowest I have ever seen morale. It makes no sense and people are kind of looking over their shoulders and wondering, what next?”
However, Battle River school board chairwoman Cheryl Smith said there is a fairly strict policy that governs the process of cutting teaching positions.
According to the procedure laid out the school division’s website, the superintendent must work with school principals to determine which teachers are considered “surplus” to the school. Criteria to be considered include teaching experience, academic qualifications, educational needs of the school and seniority.
The school division is currently finalizing school programs and teacher roles, Smith said. “It’s a fluid process … If employment openings come up within the school division, the priority will be to place any of those continuing-contract teaching staff who currently don’t have a role for next year.”
The school division – with about 1,000 employees – is cutting 34 full-time equivalent teaching positions and likely another 34 school-support staff jobs, such as educational assistants, librarians and administrative assistants, according to information on the division website. Administration, transportation, and operations and maintenance jobs will disappear too, the site says.
The cuts are a result of a shrinking budget and lower enrolment numbers, Smith said. The division got $1.1 million less than last year in education grant money from the provincial government. Student enrolment in Battle River has steadily declined since 1995, with a projected enrolment of 6,355 for September; that’s 214 fewer students than this year. In 1995, the division served 7,889 students.
The school division struggled to balance its $74 million budget for 2011-12, and looked for efficiencies across the division in all departments, Smith said.
“We have, for several years, used our reserve funds to offset (student enrolment) declines … but we’re not able to do that anymore,” she said.
The division had approximately $3 million in reserve funds in August 2010 and expects to have $500,000 left this August, Smith said.
“The whole province is facing challenges of one kind or another,” said Smith, who is also the vice-president of the Alberta School Boards Association.
“Relationships are really important to us and people are really important to us, so this is a really difficult time of year for everyone concerned.”
Officials from Edmonton Public Schools are holding a news conference Tuesday morning to discuss this city’s 2011-12 budget challenges. Officials with both the public and Catholic school boards have warned that teacher positions will be cut and class sizes will increase as a result of funding shortfalls.
Parents with the Holyrood school council are organizing a rally Sunday at noon outside the Alberta Legislature to press the provincial government for more predictable education funding.
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