It’s business as usual as far as school divisions in the area are concerned after talks between the Government of Alberta, Alberta School Boards Association, and Alberta Teachers’ Association broke down earlier this month.
For school divisions throughout Alberta, they have a little bit more work in the months ahead.
“We had all been waiting to see how the tripartite talks would turn out. It looks like now the local unions will go into bargaining with their local boards,” said Bevan Daverne, superintendent of Golden Hills School Division. “It will be business as usual as we move ahead, but we will be bargaining locally.”
As far as the classroom is concerned, Daverne did not anticipate there would be any disruption to instruction.
In a letter to the Alberta School Council’s Association, Minister of Education Jeff Johnson stated he expected “children will continue to benefit from a high-quality teaching workforce...”
Prior to the provincial agreement between the province and teachers, all bargaining was done at a local level. With the province taking care of bargaining, the local school divisions were able to concentrate more on the classrooms.
“It has been very good for education, because we [the school divisions] haven’t had to bargain for some time. A return to local bargaining is unfortunate, so we could have had another few years where we wouldn’t have to worry about it,” said Daverne.
Golden Hills School Division has already been in contact with the local teachers union.
“There would have been some items that would’ve been dealt with at a local level. We’ll just be dealing with more items than we had expected to,” said Daverne. “We have shared proposals with our local [union], so we’ll plan our next meetings and continue the process.”
