The leadership of the Prince Rupert District Teachers Union has provided an update for its membership on how they are viewing the current Budget consideration process by the Board of Education at SD52.
In a Blog item from the PRDTU website, the teachers' union Executive outlines some of their talking points for the Budget period, with a motion that focuses on three key priorities.
Moved that the presentation to the SD 52 Board of Education on the 2022-23 budget focus on the three priorities of (1) protecting members’ jobs, (2) protecting members’ job security, and (3) ensuring that SD52 adhere to the class size and class composition limits.
In their update they make note of a number of other concerns from the membership including areas of class size composition, along with a call for the Board to stop cutting teaching positions.
SD52 is a top-heavy district with too many employees working away from students. This explains why so many classes are overcapacity and why so many students are not receiving the educational supports that they need. Classroom teachers and learning support teachers are struggling to support students. With more than 60% of classrooms exceeding the limits on class size or class composition, our students cannot afford another round of teacher layoffs.
If the district must lay off employees, then those cuts should start with employees working outside of classrooms and schools. Better yet, SD52 should start shifting employees back into schools and classrooms – where the impact on student learning will make the most difference.
The PRDTU Executive has also taken up the topic of addressing enrolment declines with the District, passing a motion at their February 8th meeting.
Moved that the PRDTU advocate for improvements in addressing student attendance and absenteeism, including pushing for district-level and building-level tracking and reporting systems that are directly useful for classroom teachers; using existing administrative time and resources to build stronger connections with families for students with high barriers to regular attendance; and using existing resources to have administrators better coordinate student supports that are already provided at the building and classroom level, such as better promotion and implementation of homework help, clubs and teams, after school activities, breakfast and lunch programs, etc.
The Executive also outlined a range of what they describe as common sense improvements that the District can put in pace to address the issue
The two pages of their Budget review can be reviewed below.
As
we outlined last week, SD52 started the Budget Consultation process on January 31st, hosting a Zoom Consultation session.
The SD52 website provides some of their flow of information related towards the current Budget engagement. The documentation provides some background from the January 31st engagement opportunity,
which you can explore here.
The timeline for the remainder of the Budget Process looks as follows:
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