On Friday April 5, 2024, the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation announced the beginning of work-to-rule measures, after another disappointing round of talks with the Minister of Education.

This is an extremely serious step. And let’s be clear how we got here. We are here because of an intransigent minister and an intransigent government who show zero interest in introducing class size and class complexity measures that are commonplace in collective agreements across Canada.

It’s a simple request, one that has been a part of the STF’s proposal package since the very beginning of negotiations. However, this appears to be a non-starter for a government bent on maintaining control at all cost. The Minister would rather deliberately mislead the public with false allegations about teachers trying to “move the goalposts”.

We are here because of this government’s complete lack of interest in funding publicly delivered, public education — to the point where they have allowed inflation adjusted per student operating funding to slip from first place in Canada in 2016 to likely 10th place after the implications of the latest Saskatchewan budget work their way through the education sector.

We are here because of this minister’s outright refusal to include one sentence in a new collective bargaining agreement:

“The parties agree that the Multi-Year Funding Agreement and the accountability framework will be followed and honoured.”

Instead of good faith bargaining, Saskatchewan’s Minister of Education would rather villainize teachers with silly billboards and bully school boards into silence.

He continually shows contempt for teachers and contempt for public education.

Jeremy Cockrill doesn’t care about public education. He has another agenda.

And because of his intransigence, students, teachers, parents and Saskatchewan writ large will suffer.

No one wanted this, but here we are.

And let’s be clear about why we are here.

Here is the latest STF News Conference with President Samantha Becotte:

In response to the Government of Saskatchewan’s continuing refusal to negotiate contract language on classroom size and class complexity, the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation today gave notice of a third consecutive day of job action. Withdrawal of noon hour supervision and extracurricular activities will take place at various locations across the province on Wednesday, February 25, 2024. This is consistent with the Federation’s earlier announcement that job action would escalate, if government failed to return to the bargaining table with a renewed mandate.

The entire news release can be found here:

https://www.stf.sk.ca/about-stf/news/teachers-announce-rotating-withdrawal-of-noon-hour-supervision-and-extracurricular-activities

Here are the locations where services will be withdrawn on Wednesday:

“Withdrawal of noon-hour supervision means STF members will not be available to supervise students who are eating lunch at school or taking part in noon-hour activities. Although teachers, including principals and vice-principals, often provide lunch break supervision, it is done on a voluntary basis. Student supervision is the responsibility of the school division. Withdrawal of noon-hour supervision will involve members from the following local associations:

• Christ the Teacher Teachers’ Association – All schools in Christ the Teacher Catholic
  School Division
• Île à la Crosse Teachers’ Association – All schools in Île à la Crosse School Division
• Prairie Valley Teachers’ Association – All schools in Prairie Valley School Division
• Regina Public Schools Teachers’ Association – All schools in Regina Public Schools
• Sun West Teachers’ Association – All schools in Sun West School Division

Withdrawal of extracurricular activities means that STF members who provide voluntary leadership of all extracurricular programs, including sports, non-curricular drama, music and band, science clubs, intramurals, rehearsals, student leadership activities, planning for graduation celebrations, book fairs, and other clubs and activities, will not be available. This includes activities that take place before school, during lunch hour, after school and in the evening. Withdrawal of extracurricular activities will involve members of the following local associations:

• Île à la Crosse Teachers’ Association – All schools in Île à la Crosse School Division
• Prairie Valley Teachers’ Association – All schools in Prairie Valley School Division
• Good Spirit Teachers’ Association – All schools in Good Spirit School Division
• Saskatchewan Distance Learning Centre – All Sask DLC campuses
• Tri-West Teachers’ Association – All schools in Living Sky School Division and Light of Christ Catholic School Division and Sakewew High School (North Battleford)”.

In 2016, Saskatchewan ranked first in terms of inflation adjusted per student operating funding. Now, the province ranks eighth.

This has had consequences. Student learning conditions are teacher working conditions. Our classrooms need more support.

Here’s a concise 20 minute summary of the current state of talks on a new province-wide collective agreement for teachers in Saskatchewan, along with an explanation of next steps.

And here is a link to the news release outlining the full set of sanctions teachers are imposing on Monday, 26 February 2024:

https://www.stf.sk.ca/about-stf/news/teachers-to-withdraw-extracurricular-activities-for-one-day-provincewide

The entire news release can be found here:

https://www.stf.sk.ca/about-stf/news/teachers-to-withdraw-extracurricular-activities-for-one-day-provincewide/

This dispute would be easy to solve, if the government agreed to begin negotiating on language in the teacher’s province-wide collective agreement that deals with the pressing problems of class size, classroom complexity and violence in the classroom.

Two weeks before the resumption of the Saskatchewan Legislature and a month before the anticipated release of a 2024-2025 Saskatchewan budget, Cabinet has passed a series of special warrants worth hundreds of millions of dollars. These special warrants are a method of obtaining an approved appropriation (authorization to spend money). They are normally used when “…the Legislative Assembly is not or will not be in session for some time…”

https://www.fin.gov.nt.ca/en/glossary/special-warrant

Can the time period between now and the opening of the Saskatchewan Legislature on March 4, 2024 be legitimately defined as “…not in session for some time”? Your call.

Special Warrants are generally used in instances where there is some element of urgency that would require approval of spending without scrutiny by the legislative body.

Each signed Order in Council is preceded by a boiler-plate summary like this one, for the Ministry of Energy and Resources:

Translating that into people-speak, you’ve gone and spent all the money we gave you, but you urgently need to buy/fix/launch something we weren’t counting on when we released the initial funds in the budget back in March of 2023.

Notable additional expenditures this time around include $215m more for the SHA, $22m more for the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency (diagnostic and treatment trips to other jurisdictions??) and $200m for Physician Services (probably the new physician contract).

Notable as well is $114,785,000 for the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Energy and Resources for “remediation of contaminated sites” reopening the perennial can of worms about whether companies are being sufficiently held accountable when they leave behind a big mess.

Here are the details:

Ministry of Health: $450,100,000

Ministry of Education: $16,000,000

Ministry of Parks, Culture and Sport: $1,824,000

Government Relations: $17,688,000

Ministry of Highways: $23,400,000

Ministry of Social Services: $22,750,000

Corrections, Policing and Public Safety: $8,968,000

Justice and Attorney General: $1,664,000

Ministry of Agriculture: $86,321,000

Saskatchewan Research Council: $5,000,000

Ministry of Environment: $20,285,000

Energy and Resources: $94,500,000

SaskBuilds and Procurement: $8,995,000

The grand total? $757,495,000. That means the budget and Estimates table this past spring were off by just a bit over three-quarters of a billion dollars.

Now, some might say I’m not being very generous and compared to spending of over $18 billion in the last budget, this additional spending borders on the insignificant.

However, they were out by four percent, which is a reminder that budget making at the provincial level is a human endeavor. It involves assumptions, forecasts and more than a bit of guesswork.

All Special Warrants and Cabinet Orders in Council are always available for public review at the following website: https://publications.saskatchewan.ca/#/categories/6156

Documents relating to the 2023-2024 Saskatchewan Provincial Budget are found here:

https://www.saskatchewan.ca/government/budget-planning-and-reporting/budget-2023-24/news-releases

Here’s a link to today’s Leader Post story featuring comments from teacher federation leadership across canada:

https://leaderpost.com/news/saskatchewan/unions-across-canada-support-stfs-bid-to-bargain-class-composition-complexity

In the weeks and months before an election, there is no such thing as a private meeting or off-the-record comments, as the UK Labour Party discovered recently when one of its candidates made some objectionable comments.

“There are even those who reckon it “a kind of blessing in disguise” because it has given a vivid warning to the party’s candidates to engage brain before opening mouth and to remember that there is no such thing as a truly “private” meeting. I’m sceptical that everyone will learn the lesson. It will not be at all surprising if secret recordings with incendiary content released at a time designed to cause maximum disruption are a feature of the general election campaign. History suggests it will not just be Labour that has made some unwise candidate selections.”

Andrew Rawnsley
Guardian
18 February 2024

From today’s Sunday Times, a story about community recycling monitoring taken to the extreme:

In Berlin every block of flats has a communal bin house where you separate paper and cardboard, bio waste and Wertstoffe (all other recyclables). “There’s a fair bit of peer pressure to recycle properly,” says Oliver Moody, our Berlin correspondent. “The state of the bins and the assiduity of the sorting probably account for a solid quarter of the messages in our local WhatsApp group.” When a sleep-deprived Moody (accidentally) left a used nappy in the wrong bin, it caused a scandal. “We were singled out as dreckspatzen or ‘dirt-sparrows’.”

Sunday Times, London
18 February 2024