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DPAC's letter re: job action
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Teachers Job Action
At the City-wide PAC meeting in October, our DPAC was asked to write to the Teachers and BC Public School Employers Council to convey concerns on behalf of our PACs.
This is the letter that was sent out.
November 17, 2011
BC Teachers’ Federation
100 - 550 West 6th Avenue
Vancouver, BC, Canada
V5Z 4P2
Attention: Susan Lambert, President
AND
BCPSEA
400-1333 West Broadway,
VancouverBC
V6H 4C1
Attention: Melanie Joy, Chair
Dear Ms Lambert and Ms Joy,
Representatives of the 109 Parent Advisory Councils (PACS) within District #39 requested that theVancouver District Parents Advisory Council (VDPAC) express our growing frustration with the lack of progress in concluding the bargaining between Teachers and their employer.
DPAC acknowledges the professional and focused effort of the leadership within the Vancouver School Board to make plans to support the frontline staff and minimize impacts to our children whenever possible. We admire the personal efforts of some of our children’s teachers and their frontline administrators to minimize the impact to our children. We also have respected and supported the collective bargaining process between the organizations by waiting quietly and patiently for its conclusion.
Nevertheless the above efforts can be sustained for only so long and our growing concerns are that as bargaining stretches to three months of the school year, with no foreseeable end near, we are starting to see signs that we have reached the capacity to maintain the norm with impacts to our children increasing in number and volume. We are very frustrated with the lack of clear and consistent information on the progress of bargaining which adds to our concerns. Most information we are receiving is reactive and unreliable.
VDPAC represents the clients served by both the VSB and the teacher associations, and we request that the Bargaining teams for both the teachers and the education employers re-focus your bargaining strategy and increase your efforts to conclude your collective bargaining quickly and respectfully. VDPAC further requests that during the remaining bargaining period you improve the frequency and reliability of information to families to aid in reducing our concerns.
We look forward to a speedy conclusion of the present, unacceptable state of affairs.
Respectfully yours,
Colin Redfern (colinred@interchange.ubc.ca) and Jennifer West (jennifer.west@live.ca)
Co-Chairs on behalf of the Vancouver District Parent Advisory Council
Cc Honourable George Abbott, Minister of Education
Steve Cardwell, Superintendent, School District 39
Trustees, School District 39
Vancouver MLAs
Hugh Finlayson, CEO, BCCPSEA
Vancouver DPAC Executive
Ann Whiteaker, President, BCCPAC
Categories: Currently... (thoughts from the Chairs)
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3 Comments
Personally, I haven't found there to be a lack of information about the contract negotiations. But the lack of progress is frustrating. And it's very hard to see how withholding report cards and preventing teachers from talking with principals on school-wide issues or district-wide issues is supposed to help resolve things.
Teachers deserve fair pay and children deserve well-supported learning conditions. The government has to be fiscally responsible. These things aren't going to change, so why don't the negotiators roll up their sleeves and work this out without dragging every child, parent, teacher, and school into it?
As far as parents go, most of the time we are quiet because yelling our heads off would only make everyone even more unhappy. It is not the administrators fault or the teachers' fault that my son is not getting a report card. But my son has a learning difference (unfunded) and the fact is that neither he nor I have a clear idea of how he is doing. We are sure that the teacher would be in touch if he was failing, but what if he is getting 65% when he could be getting 78%? We won't know until too late and these marks will be on his permanent record.
I'd rather that the teachers just walked out. Strike and make the employers take this seriously. Do they think that parents are going to be angry with teachers? No. We support our teachers. I think we support teachers more than their own union does.
As far as the employers go, all they are doing is driving us to put our children into private schools. I can put my children into a Catholic school for not much more than I spend on fundraisers and field trips at my public school. If my son ends up with plummeting marks because we didn't have Meet the Teacher night and no report card, that is where he will go next year. An online school would also be good. Then I would see how he is doing at least.
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