The union representing teachers in Port Alberni, B.C., says some of its members are essentially trapped in the community due to a highway closure, with no support from the district.
There are about half a dozen teachers who work in Port Alberni and live what’s normally a 45-minute commute away in the Parksville/Qualicum area.
But with Highway 4 closed due to the Cameron Bluffs Wildfire, the only way between the two communities is a nearly six-hour drive via a logging road detour.
“Currently, we have a group of teachers who are, for lack of a better term … trapped on the other side of the hump,” Alberni District Teachers Union local president Ryan Dvorak said.
The union says teachers were told to be be back in the classroom this past Monday, with the expectation they be present for class on a daily basis.
That means a daily round-trip commute of 12 hours, or finding somewhere to stay in Port Alberni, at the teachers’ own expense, Dvorak said.
“The unreasonableness of that (commute) expectation has been very quickly realized by people,” Dvorak said.
“What they’ve had to do is turn their job into a camp job. They now have no other option but to find a place to live in Port Alberni.”
Dvorak said some teachers have young children at home, and that the situation has some facing “significant extra expense.”
Staff who live in Port Alberni and members of the community have since stepped up to offer couches or spare beds in some cases, he added.
The district has not offered the stranded teachers any kind of financial assistance, and the only other option they have is to stay home unpaid, he said.
School District 70 superintendent Tim Davie said it would not be appropriate for the district to pay teachers to stay home.
“Thoughts that came through the union … were that the school district should pay for teachers to be at home and not in their community of their employment, fulfilling, I guess, the requirement of their job. That’s not a stance that the employer shares,” he said.
Davie said teachers were given three days last week of paid leave to try and sort out accommodations in Port Alberni, something he said he himself had to do.
He said only some of the stranded staff are actually teachers who are required to be in the classroom, and that others are able to work remotely.
But he said for the sake of continuity for the students, it is important that classroom teachers be on site.
“It’s unfortunate,” he said.
“We’re receiving phone calls today from members from the community who are pulling together in this crisis to ensure that teachers have an opportunity to stay, and in some of those instances it’s either low cost or no cost.”
In a statement, the Ministry of Education acknowledged the school community was facing a “difficult situation” and “a hard time,” but said the school district was “best positioned to comment on the approaches they have taken to keep schools open while also acknowledging the difficult situation some staff find themselves in.”
The Ministry of Transportation is aiming to have Highway 4 back open to single-lane alternating traffic by June 24 and fully reopened by mid-July, but has also warned that timeline is fluid.
Dvorak said the situation shows that the province needs to implement legislation dealing with employers’ responsibility in the case of crises and emergencies like this one, which are becoming more common in the face of climate change.
“My members love their jobs and they want to be here doing their jobs,” he said.
“Being put in this position where you have to choose between something extraordinarily unsafe or your employment, you know it’s brutal.”
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