Students are back in classrooms and the Flin Flon School Board is back in session.
The students are not the only group of people who will be learning in September. Flin Flon School Division (FFSD) teachers took part in a regional session in The Pas on Sept. 13 and 14 for training in the new provincial English language arts (ELA) curriculum. Other sessions in The Pas are scheduled for later in the school year.
“It’s under a mandate from the ministry of education,” said Constance McLeese, FFSD superintendent.
“Teachers from all of the schools have gone down for the training. It’s ongoing – they’ll go down several times. It’s a more effective way for the ministry to deliver training to the north, so we don’t all have to fly down to Winnipeg.”
The ELA training is the latest in a recent round of education sessions for FFSD educators, with more sessions coming in Flin Flon. An accessibility training session was held on Sept. 4 at the division’s annual pancake breakfast, one day before students returned to class in Flin Flon. Another session, organized by the provincial Ministry of Education and Training, will involve Kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 2 teachers working in Flin Flon.
The early years teachers will be trained on portions of the provincial ELA curriculum relating to early literacy assessment.
Bill 28
No movement has been reported recently on a controversial piece of provincial legislation, said school board members.
A year and a half after it was first passed by the provincial government, Bill 28, also known officially as the Public Services Sustainability Act, still has not been proclaimed and no school divisions in the province have agreed to contract terms laid out in the bill, designed to reduce provincial government spending.
If the bill is fully enacted as it currently stands, all public sector employees in Manitoba will have their wages frozen for two years, with a limit on raises in the third and fourth year of the contract.
A court challenge against the bill was filed by a coalition of Manitoba public sector unions in July 2017. After a judge ruled against the group’s request for an injunction in July, the group issued a further legal challenge in hopes of altering or overturning the bill. The challenge will not be heard in court until Nov. 2019.
While the future of Bill 28 is unclear, all Manitoba teachers and school staff, including FFSD workers, are working without a current contract.
“It certainly limits us in terms of getting those contracts sorted out,” said board chair Amy Sapergia Green.
“Our contracts have run out for the teachers and the school staff after this past year. It will affect us for the next four years.”
Until a new contract is approved, school workers will continue to work under the terms of the previous contact. No school divisions have approved a new contract as of press time.
None of the current school board members could recall a similar situation in Manitoba in recent memory. Trustee Murray Skeavington recalled that both BC and Ontario had similar experiences with labour legislation.
“[That was] not good for the governments. They lost in both cases,” he said.
“The one in Ontario, where they froze the salaries, it was about eight or nine years ago now. It’s been a while. It took about four or five years to actually get it through the courts,” said McLeese.
