Sept. 5 marks the start of a new school year under a new agreement that will see smaller class sizes and more teachers hired in School District No. 46 (SD46).
In March, the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) reached a deal with the provincial government that ended a long-standing battle over bargaining rights.
The new deal came after a Supreme Court of Canada decision that gave teachers the right to bargain class size and composition. This year, the changes teachers agreed to will come into play.
Kindergarten classes will now be capped at 20 students, instead of 22, Grades 1 to 3 will consist of up to 22 students, instead of 24, Grades 4 to 12 will stay at a maximum of 30 students, although students in a Grade 3/4 split can have class sizes of up to only 26, while mixed grade classes with students in Grades 4 to 7 can see up to 28 kids.
The new memorandum of agreement between the BCTF and the province also calls for fewer students in science, home economics and industrial education due to the nature of those classes. Now up to 26 students can be in one of those specialized classes, instead of 30.
The final change has to do with special needs students. No more than two “low incidence” students can be in any one class under the new agreement. Before, there was no cap.
While some other B.C. school districts have been struggling to hire enough teachers to meet the new requirements, SD46 superintendent of schools Patrick Bocking said SD46 had no trouble.
“We’re very fortunate on the Sunshine Coast. Obviously it’s a great place to be and relatively inexpensive and so it’s a wonderful place to establish a career,” Bocking said.
“Unlike many of our fellow districts in metro, we are in a really good place for our staff. We have the specialist teachers we need, the teacher librarians, the special ed teachers, the music teachers. So we’re in a really good situation that way.”
Although SD46 isn’t lacking teachers, Bocking couldn’t give an accurate count on the number of new teachers added to the payroll just yet.
“Any numbers we have are preliminary because again we don’t know how many kids we have,” he said. “We obviously have an idea, but if three or four kids arrive in a certain grade in a certain school, we may have to add a teacher. If some don’t arrive, we may have to reduce.”
While finding enough teachers won’t be an issue, one thing that could become a problem in SD46 is space.
“We are tight in many of our schools in terms of using all the classroom space that’s available, and we’ve got some portables in some of our schools that we need to use to make sure that our students have good classrooms. We’re OK with that, but we’re full,” Bocking said.
“So in terms of being ready to go for September, we certainly are, but through September we need to be monitoring our class sizes.”
Bocking said some shifting of students and addition or reduction of classes may need to take place to make sure SD46 “meets the appropriate class-size expectations,” but school district officials won’t know for sure until they see who shows up next week.
“Certainly by the end of the first week we want elementary students in with the classroom teachers they’re going to have for the full year, that’s our intention,” Bocking said. “But the final decision has to be done by Sept. 30 because that’s when we need to report our information to the Ministry of Education.”
Until students get settled, Bocking said, teachers will keep them busy with “interesting orientation activities, starting some academic work and reviewing some things from previous years, setting expectations, that kind of thing.”
Right now SD46 is expecting to welcome more than 3,200 students back to school on Sept. 5. That first day will only be about two and a half hours long and will start about two hours later than normal. Check www.sd46.bc.ca to see individual school start and end times.
Schools are ready for students, thanks to some deep cleaning and remediation work done over the summer by cleaning and maintenance staff. In addition to the regular cleaning regime, Bocking said Langdale Elementary was fitted with a rooftop of solar panels and West Sechelt Elementary had some asbestos removed.
The West Sechelt school was found to have asbestos in the stipple ceiling and “out of an abundance of caution,” SD46 took it out this summer. “There was encapsulated asbestos in the stipple which was identified and safely removed,” Bocking said, noting the substance isn’t dangerous until it’s disturbed. “A company came in to check the air quality after the work had been done to be sure the air quality is healthy. The result is that it was healthy.”
