Alberta Teachers’ Association president Jason Schilling joins Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins to discuss the UCP government’s new plan to deploy hundreds of teams of teachers and education assistants to high priority elementary classes across the province. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Michael Higgins: What degree does this address the primary concerns you brought to the forefront back during the teachers’ strike? Jason Schilling: We brought these issues to the forefront prior to the teachers’ strike. This is something we’ve been talking to the government about for years in terms of the increased complexity to our classrooms, the lack of teachers that we have within the system. So the government saying that they finally have heard teachers after the largest strike action in Alberta’s history, I know that for a lot of my colleagues those words fell a little bit flat. Because it’s something that they have been advocating for years. MH: What do you see these three-person teams accomplishing in the classroom? JS: We’re skeptical about what this will mean. It’s something that is relatively new for Alberta. I know some schools do have complexity teams like this. Teachers are just unsure what this is going to do, if it’s going to address the needs they have within their classrooms. The data released by government last week said 99 per cent of our classrooms in this province have a complexity issue that’s systemic. So if 99 per cent of our classrooms have this issue, and 476 complexity teams start looking at this issue, it seems like it’s a bit of a small measure by what the need is within the system. MH: Is the window of K to Grade 6 the appropriate place to focus this attention? JS: We know kids who have early intervention in K to Grade 3 thrive later on in their schoolings, but a lot of schools that are 7 to 12 are also experiencing complexity issues. Some of our largest classes are in the 7 to 12 grades, and they have the same complexities as the K to 6 teachers. So a lot of my colleagues who are teaching 7 to 12 are looking at this announcement and going, well, what about us? MH: Who do you see providing the guidance for these teams? Is there enough of an existing model to lean on? JS: We’ll have to see. Like I said, this is relatively new in Alberta. I know the premier had made a comment that she talked to somebody about the Saskatchewan model, but this is still relatively new in Saskatchewan. We’ll have to see what this looks like, how they will be deployed. This will be very much on the shoulders of school boards to staff and then implement and to make sure these teams are in schools making a difference. MH: How do you weigh how the government has drawn its data on class size and complexity? How could it be used moving forward? JS: It’s more detailed than what they’ve collected in the past, but they haven’t collected class size since 2019, and we know the world of public education has changed dramatically since that time. We’ve had a pandemic, we’ve had an influx of students within the system, we have been chronically underfunded during that time. When they collected all this data, and it’s very detailed in certain aspects, I was surprised the government was surprised by this issue. Even though we’ve been talking about it with them for years, they need to continue to make sure they’re collecting this data in an unbiased manner and reporting it accurately as we move forward in the next couple of years. They said they’re going to, and we’ll hold them to that. MH: Does the data reflect what your members are saying about the dynamics in their classrooms? I believe the government put the provincial class size average at 25. JS: You have to be mindful of the average. I taught in a rural school district. I often would have classes of 38 or 40, but you balance that out with a smaller community that had 12 or 14 kids. Average is below the numbers that they’re saying. But what we’re experiencing in classrooms, in urban areas and rural areas, an average is just an average. What we actually need to talk about is the realities of our classrooms and what teachers and students are facing. MH: In these early days, are there roadblocks you envision coming up with getting these teams rolling? JS: There’s going to be a roadblock in hiring people. That was the number one question I was asked last week. Where are these teachers going to come from? Where are these EAs going to come from? That’s going to be the first challenge, and that’s on the shoulders of the school boards. It’s on the shoulders of the school boards and the government, who are ultimately responsible for hiring. This is a government that has vilified teachers for the last couple of years, has underfunded public education in a way where I’m not sure how many people are looking to come to Alberta to teach right now. So governments and school boards have some work to do to repair a damaged relationship. MH: We have a provincial budget coming next week. Can you give us a sense of what your expectations are in furthering this plan and where education lands in the budget? JS: I’m hoping education is a huge priority. In the fall we saw teachers and parents and students saying the status quo was not good enough anymore. Will we be the least funded school jurisdiction in all of Canada again? Or will the government actually act on the words they said: we heard you, we’re going to fix things. Are they actually going to put these actions into place? The government’s budget will be a good reflection of what their priorities are. MH: You’re in the midst of teacher conventions right now, around four months since the imposing of back to work legislation. What are your members saying? JS: Teachers are still feeling demoralized by the fact the government used the notwithstanding clause to strip their Charter rights away, to put an imposed deal into place. They didn’t have to use that legislation to do it. Teachers were put back into a situation they had left to go on strike to make better for students. If anything the crisis we’re seeing in education has only deepened, and so we’ll have to do some work to move this forward. Right now, teachers are really feeling disrespected by this government and we’ll have to see if the government will actually put some actions to the words they said. Teachers are tired of listening to the government talk about announcements, more schools, more funding. They actually need to see the government doing something now.
