With their collective bargaining agreement expiring in August, the Saskatchewan Teachers Federation (STF) and the province are holding meetings to come together on their next one.
The current agreement was signed in 2019; since then, Samantha Becotte, the president of STF, said that over the years, teachers have been discussing the challenges they face in education and how services continue to erode.
“Our enrollment growth in Saskatchewan is not being matched by teachers. We see more students in our classes, but we don’t see more teachers,” she said. “That means class sizes are increasing. There is less time for teachers to work one on one and meet those individual needs and build connections that they want to build. There are just so many diverse issues across the province that the lack of investment is not addressing.”
Becotte noted other missing supports are mental health support and a lack of school nutrition programs.
While talks are just beginning, Becotte said she expects negotiations to centre around students’ success.
“A lot of proposals look at ensuring students are supported in their schools. We are seeing more and more professional supports that are not being funded. We have more school divisions that are talking about cuts to education, and we need to have a mechanism that keeps the Government accountable to ensure that students have the support that they need so they can be successful.”
“If students are successful, then that means likely teachers are more able to do those jobs and teach students rather than having to do all of the extra support that have been missing in our schools.”
Becotte is hopeful their negotiations will be fruitful.
“We’ve just gotten through some of that introductory work, but I’m hopeful that government and the school boards are coming to the table ready to have some good faith negotiations and that we can see a quick resolution to the process.”
In the previous round of negotiations, class size, complexity, and salary were the two most important issues teachers wanted to address.
