Teachers and supporters take part in a rally on World Teachers' Day in Edmonton on Sunday.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
Calgary Grade 12 student Blythe Rumjahn expects to sleep in this week. But he’s not happy about it.
The 17-year-old honours student usually shows up at school well before the first bell to study and stays late most afternoons for band and other activities.
But as of Monday, he joins more than 700,000 students across Alberta missing classes when the province’s teachers go on strike.
Like the rest of his cohort, Mr. Rumjahn has been here before; most of his junior high years were interrupted by COVID-19. But this time, there’s no seeing the teacher online; he’ll have to figure out calculus entirely on his own. And he’s disappointed about potentially missing still more teenage rites of passage, including the fall Senior Sunset, when Grade 12 students gather after school at Calgary’s Nose Hill and stay until dark.
“We are already stressed applying for university,” said Mr. Rumjahn, who wants to be a teacher himself, so his frustration is tempered with sympathy. “I really want to get everything I can out of school.”
Alberta teachers edge toward a strike with salaries a key issue
Unfortunately, he may be at home for a while. The Alberta government has already announced long-haul initiatives, including an online curriculum, and $150 a week for parents with younger kids to cover childcare and tutors - paid out with money, the province says, that would have otherwise been spent on teacher salaries.
A spokesperson for Alberta’s Treasury Board said the Alberta Teachers’ Association did not respond to requests to return to formal bargaining on the weekend, although the union said that “exploratory talks” continued. Last week, teachers from the public, separate and francophone school boards overwhelmingly rejected the government’s latest offer, which included a 12-per-cent pay raise over four years; the union has proposed 34.5 per cent over the same time period, while publicly saying it hopes to land somewhere in the middle.
The province’s 51,000 teachers are also demanding the government address growing class sizes and the lack of resources to support complex student needs.
On Sunday, while rallies were also held in Red Deer, Calgary and Lethbridge, a crowd of educators, parents and students - estimated at 18,000 people – chanted and sang their support for these issues outside the provincial legislature in Edmonton.
“I am really heartbroken for this whole generation,” said Jodie McDonald, mother of a Grade 11 student, as she headed home from the rally. “They have dealt with a lot and have managed to get through it.” But especially after the height of the pandemic, “we need to give them the tools to be successful.”
The rally in Edmonton on Sunday comes ahead of Alberta teachers beginning job action Monday over a dispute with the province.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
While she worries about her son missing school, Ms. McDonald, who owns a small business, banged her stadium-style thunderstick noisemaker on Sunday in support of the teachers. She’s concerned, she said, about crowded schools and the lack of funding for public education.
Nancy Kirkpatrick, who squeezed up to the rally’s front row with Ms. McDonald, pointed out that her son will have to compete in a lottery next year for a Grade 10 placement because their nearby high schools are so full. “What is the future if we don’t have space in our public schools?” asked Ms. Kirkpatrick, who co-founded the Edmonton Public School Advocacy Network, along with Ms. McDonald and another parent in 2023.
Luke Coley, a television news director who works shifts, says he and his wife, are lucky to have their 12-year-old daughter to watch her nine-year-old brother while they’re at work. But Mr. Coley recalls the serious catch-up required in his own Grade 12 year, when Alberta teachers went on strike for 17 days. If this current labour action goes on longer, he said he worries about “another learning hit” like the one students experienced during the pandemic.
Lara Mack, Mr. Rumjahn’s mother, hopes to keep him focused on university - while also sticking to a routine for her five-year-old son, Brodie, who set off eagerly for kindergarten with his Sonic Hedgehog backpack this September, and was crushed at the news he’d probably be staying home Monday.
Luckily, after some extra sleep, and between practising his alto saxophone and the math study group already being organized, his big brother is promising to build a pillow fort.