Students across Alberta are protesting in support of teachers following the province’s use of the notwithstanding clause.
“Teachers helped shape my future,” said 16-year-old organizer Nyla Ahmadzai. “I want to be able to come out and tell them: ‘I stand with you. I see your efforts and I want you to be recognized for everything you do.’”
Students, many wearing “red for ed,” from Archbishop MacDonald Catholic High School and Ross Sheppard High School walked out Thursday morning, making their way to the nearby Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) building in northwest Edmonton.
David Lee, a student from Archbishop MacDonald, said he and a few other students began organizing the walkout last week once they heard teachers were being forced back to work.
“We learned that they were going back to school with the exact same conditions they walked out on,” said Lee in front of the ATA building. “We are obviously very happy to be with our friends and our teachers, but it is also incredibly disheartening seeing so many teachers’ spirits crushed.”
He said the passion teachers have shown their students inspired them to show up for educators.
“These are the people that showed us our passions and inspirations in life, and to see them having such crushed spirits about their attempts to get better public education really disappointed us,” he said. “But it also filled us with the passion and drive to be out here today.”
The Alberta legislature also saw students rallying alongside those protesting the province’s changes to its financial and health benefits program for people with disabilities.
“Students are the ones who are directly affected by what’s going on in classrooms,” said ATA president Jason Schilling in a statement. “The fact that they’re standing up for themselves and organizing these events is an indication of how much they care about their own education.”
With about 500 or so students rallying outside of the legislature, Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said he supported students voicing their concerns.
“That’s an important part of our democracy,” he told reporters. “Of course they’ve been out of school for three weeks, they’ve lost a lot of learning attributed to the strike, and I’m concerned they might be missing some more important schooling.”
He said he is confident that the vast majority of students want to be in class and get back to normalcy.
The province is currently working on a plan for diploma exams and whether or not they’ll be optional or mandatory. The minister said the plan will be announced later Thursday or on Friday.
The Alberta government swiftly passed Bill 2, or the Back to School Act, in the early hours of Tuesday. The act legislates the terms of an agreement that members of the ATA widely rejected in September because it didn’t address issues of classroom size and complexity.
The September agreement included a 12 per cent salary increase over four years, additional market adjustments of up to 17 per cent for some teachers, and the hiring of 3,000 teachers and 1,500 educational assistants.
Matilda Barron, another student who organized the protest, said overcrowding in classrooms is something she and her peers experience every day.
“We have stories from all over Alberta about how classes don’t have enough desks and people are counting on students being sick just so they have somewhere to sit,” Barron told CTV News Edmonton.
“It affects me personally … When my teachers have 40 kids times four classes, they don’t have enough time to give me the feedback that I need to grow as a student.”
Barron said provincial leaders should spend a week in one of Alberta’s schools so they can see the conditions for themselves.
The government said they will be implementing a task force to begin assessing classroom complexity and will begin collecting data on class size after stopping in 2019.
“We are ready to work with school boards and teachers to address classroom complexity and class sizes. We have heard them loud and clear and we are taking bold action to address these issues,” Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said in a statement.
The ATA said the collection of data should have never stopped.
“This vital information is needed to understand the classroom complexities experienced by teachers and students every day,” said the ATA in a statement Wednesday night. “We look forward to the changes that will occur in Alberta’s classrooms based on this new data.”
More than 50,000 teachers were on strike for three weeks as contract negotiations with the province reached a breaking point, marking the longest education strike in Alberta’s history.
In order to get kids back to class and to prevent further strikes from happening at local and general tables, the Alberta government used the notwithstanding clause in the passing of Bill 2.
If organizations were to strike illegally, they would be fined $500,000 per day of job action. Individuals would receive a $500 fine.
Unions across the province spoke out in solidarity with the ATA, with the Alberta Federation of Labour announcing Wednesday they would begin preparing for a general strike, which could see tens of thousands of workers across dozens of industries walk off the job.
