Tagged: Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union
Pushback on two ways NS could have better schools for less money
A Contrarian reader who does not identify himself, but who appears to work in the provincial school system, doesn’t think much of my suggestions for two painless, cost-free steps the province could take to improve schools.
To refresh your memory, these were (1) force school boards to implement modern hiring practices in place of the demeaning, talent-repelling, corruption-promoting way they now teachers; and (2) remove superintendents, senior managers, education department officials seconded from school boards, and non-teaching principals from belonging to the teachers’ union.
[T]he [hiring practices] you suggest… will not change the fundamental problem: the declining enrolment and the lack of jobs for new teachers. The boards can be as rigorous in their hiring practices as you might wish, that isn’t going to magically increase the number of available classroom teaching positions.
Anyone wishing to be a teacher in this era of out-migration and fiscal restraint in Nova Scotia must accept that they have two basic choices: go elsewhere for full-time employment or work as a substitute teacher in their local area until a job becomes available.
They only have to accept that because boards refuse to adopt modern hiring practices, to wit: a public call for applications; review of resumes to produce a short list; interviews, tests, and reference checks to decide who they hire. That’s how organizations hire rocket butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. Why not teachers?
The school system is not an employment program for recent education grads. The fact there is a surfeit of applicants and a scarcity of positions should make it easy for boards to hire superb candidates for the few available positions. Instead, the current method operates as a negative screen, discouraging candidates who are ambitious and adventuresome, while opening the process to favoritism, nepotism, and opportunities to game the system.
The best possible construction to put on the current system is that boards are cynically taking advantage of the surplus of aspiring but unemployed teachers as a cheap and infinitely flexible pool of substitutes. The substitute issue is a separate one, and should be dealt with separately.
My correspondent offers two alternative solutions:
[Because] Nova Scotia will always need a surplus of teachers… the province should reduce the number of positions in the education programs to more sustainable levels and apply all those “modern personnel practices” to the applicants. That way, the best candidates will get into the program and will have a reasonable expectation of employment when they leave.
Restore the pay for substitute teachers to reasonable “livable” levels and find ways to reduce the huge debt burden most graduating teachers are forced to carry (for example, return to a one-year education program, perhaps).
I have no objection to asking universities to be more selective in admissions to their education programs, but it’s a mistake to think the school board’s mission is to provide employment for everyone who wants to teach. Its mission is to educate students. To do that, school boards should look for ways to select the best possible teachers. If they were doing that, I’d support excellent salaries for excellent teachers.
The proposal that the education system should opt for less education of its core employees strikes me as bizarre.
As for getting superintendents, middle managers, and non-teaching principals out of the union, my correspondent says:
Not surprisingly, there are many classroom teachers who would agree with you on this issue. However, in other provinces (such as British Columbia), removing the administration from the union has proven to be a mixed blessing.
Especially in small schools (of which Nova Scotia has many), drawing a management / union line has reduced the collaboration that is required for these schools to flourish.
For the B.C. government, the exclusion of the administration from the teachers’ union has simply meant that it has to work with a number of education organizations instead of just one. Worse, each one of these organizations has a mandate and an agenda.
Be careful of what you wish for.
I am unmoved. Managers should not be in the union–any union–and many problems with the culture of Nova Scotia’s school system can be traced to this anomaly. Maybe, just maybe, Premier Dexter’s shot at the NSTU this week in the legislature means he would consider changing this.
More news, less faux psychodrama in legislature reporting, please
I don’t mean to be overly cranky with my former colleagues in the political journalism racket, but I could do with a little less psychoanalysis and a little more content in reports from the Nova Scotia House of Assembly.
CBC legislature reporter Jean Laroche’s weekly debrief this morning was long on the former and light on the latter.
Premier Dexter, he explained, normally doesn’t have a short fuse, but the Chignecto-Central Regional School Board’s threat to decimate library staff caused him to blow his stack. The debate, opined Laroche, had an unusual, intensely personal character.
Really? None of the clips Laroche played showed anything like that. In them, the premier calmly, if wearily, pointed out that the board’s empty threat was the oldest, tiredest arrow in the school board’s threadbare quiver, a tactic described here months ago as “Kill the Friendly Giant.” Laroche himself must have seen it play out 50 times, as have the opposition leaders who cynically played along.
After a decade in which school enrolment dropped by 30,000 students, while school board budgets marched briskly upward, the government has rightly ordered modest restraint in the coming year. The Chignecto board responded by announcing that a popular program with a vocal constituency will be eliminated as the only possible means of coping with “massive cutbacks imposed by the province.”
Yawn.
The real news in the exchange was the premier’s sharp (and long overdue) criticism of the Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union for its obdurate defence of the status quo in a system undergoing thermonuclear demographic implosion. Dexter thinks a progressive union should be an enthusiastic partner in the search for better ways to operate a system that hasn’t changed much in 100 years.
Laroche helpfully explained that this is entirely untrue, that teachers embrace change every year by adjusting to annual tweaks in mandated curricula. Do tell.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the premier and his education minister will consider two cost-free proposals for injecting a spirit of innovation into the system.
The snow day debate continues
Too damned many.
In response to my note about the 40-something Norwegian who had never seen a snow day until he came to Nova Scotia, Contrarian reader Joyce Rankin of Mabou Westmount blames consolidation of schools and secularization of society for the proliferation of snow days. Her response sparked a lively email debate.
I remember we never used to have snow days either. But then again, we were close enough to school that we could walk.
The questions to ask, for a proper comparison, would be how far children in Norway travel to school, and how far people drive to work, and over what kind of roads? And if there’s not an official snow day, does that mean that everyone shows up? Or does it mean that those who can make it come and the place functions (or not) with a skeleton crew, accomplishing little.
You can drive in this.
All valid points. But it could also be there that Norwegians are just a little less timid about driving when there is half an inch of snow? We do have snow tires after all. This implies that driving on snow is something we do.
Why doesn’t Alberta have snow days? We have too many damn snow days. I hear it from everyone.
It’s not so much snow that’s the problem, but rather ice. In Alberta it tends to get cold and stay cold, and it is not as wet. Not so much temperature fluctuation and hence less ice. Plus in areas where it’s flatter and the roads are straighter, the driving is easier. (Note that the accident often happen at curves and hills.)
I’m not disagreeing that it gets a bit silly sometimes. But the school board is to blame, too, because the new procedure is for the board superintendent to make the call for the whole district, rather than the principal making it for each school. I guess they haven’t noticed the variation in weather from, say, Ingonish to Sydney River to Louisbourg, or from Pleasant Bay to Louisdale to Canso to Antigonish.
Plus it’s because of liability. Administration is afraid that someone will get hurt and they’ll get sued for making them come to work.
Birds do it. Squirrels do it. Even bright yellow buses do it.
I take your point about one-size fits all in boards that stretch over a huge territory. But I think the issue shows a problem with the way society handles small risks of terrible outcomes. We place policy makers in an invidious position. They might be criticized for over caution, but they would be savaged if a child is injured or killed. But life is not risk free.
This issue also dovetails with another bugaboo of mine: the fact that too many school system managers, up to and including superintendents, are in the teachers’ union. Unions should not be given the task of deciding when a day off is appropriate.
The bottom line is that we have far too many snow days in NS. We have snow days where there is barely any snow. We have snow days on days we would not have given a second thought 15 years ago. It has crept up on us, and it has gone too far.
I have driven long distances on bad roads to work, and I have worked in places where there’s a lot of pressure to be at work no matter what (and where you don’t get paid if you don’t come in).
It would be interesting to compare accident stats –was there a larger percentage of serious accidents and fatalities when people were more willing to drive on icy roads? I’m guessing yes.
Some wintry jurisdictions keep on bussin'.
While you’re at it, compare snow-day attendance at Nova Scotia ski hills compared to weekdays when schools remain open.
I think one of the results of secularization is that people value themselves and their physical well-being more than they used to. We expect to have control over our lives. We have less of the kind of humility that a) leaves it up to God or to fate, and b) views oneself as only one of many. We have learned to expect that we should be taken care of and insulated from risk. Most workplaces are much safer than they used to be, fewer people work outdoors, and there’s less call to be tough and resilient. (Which probably explains the rise of extreme sports -these are the people who in another century would have gone to sea or been a trapper or something.)
We expect things to be okay, we see it as an entitlement. And when something does go wrong, we want to blame it on someone. People in administration know this, and they don’t want to be the one blamed.
Better schools for less money – still more feedback
Paul W. Bennett, Director of Schoolhouse Consulting and former headmaster of the Halifax Grammar School and Lower Canada College, wades in on the school issue (previous posts here and here):
Better schools for less money is not only possible but achievable in Nova Scotia. Judging from the “Kids not Cuts” spending spree, the NSTU, the NSSBA, and their acolytes sense that the public is awakening to their “Kill the Friendly Giant” strategy. Why else would they be pouring thousands into a media campaign attempting to remould their image?On the matter of teacher hiring, I think that you are slightly off the mark. The NSTU certainly runs a closed shop. Some 2,000 teachers are on those “supply lists,” and most will never be hired as regular teachers. The real issue is the Hiring System and the dominance of NSTU rules and regulations known as the LIFO seniority system (Last-In, First-Out). When reductions have to be made, it’s all based on seniority, further demolalizing those promising teachers langushing on supply lists. In New York City, those teachers got organized and formed Educators for Education (E4E) and the rules eventually came tumbling down.
Getting the school administration out of the NSTU simply makes common sense. In Ontario, for example, superintendents, principals annd vice-principals are not in the bargaining unit. It’s just a matter of time before those supposedly in charge of the system come to their senses. Having everyone in the NSTU from the regular classroom to the Superintendent is indefensible. When tough decisions have to be made, who actually represents the public interest, aside from the Minister and her staff? It’s actually costing us dearly at contract time. We should be asking why the Nova Scotia government tolerates the current situation.
Contrarian, you are not alone on this critical public issue. Most Nova Scotians, presented with the stark facts, are with you on this matter. Virtually every education article posted recently on the topic of school boards and the union elicits the same response – a pox on both their houses. It will take more than a “Kids not Cuts” ad blitz to alter the deep seated public attitude that the “core interests” in education speak only for themselves.
Alistair Watt adds:
One major force in the farce is the NSTU, which consistently bargains for their permanent full-time employees at the expense of casual or term employees (I am using the NSCC terminology, though substitute teachers and new hires are treated just as poorly within the public school system).The hiring processes used in P-12 and beyond are appalling , and they need major overhauls.As long as nobody is willing to stand up to the NSTU and change the hiring processes, nothing will improve. The only people that I know who could do this are the ministers within the provincial government, who have mostly hidden behind a wall of “not interfering with the bargaining process `(my wording). In theory, the hiring processes are fully the responsibility of the management, and are not controlled by the bargaining processes, which leads us back to the Ministers.Changing the way people are hired would be a win-win move. All it needs is some guts from the Ministers ( and some cooperation from NSTU).
Two ways NS could have better schools for less money
For years, school enrollments in Nova Scotia have plummeted while school board budgets rose faster than inflation. Last winter, the Dexter Government asked boards to think about ways to operate with less. The boards and their colleagues in arms, the Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union, reacted with a Kill the Friendly Giant strategy.
In the end, the government imposed modest cuts, and the boards will continue to operate as they have for decades. It was a missed opportunity for reform.
Well, before the notion of school reform goes dormant for another five years, here are two ways school boards could work better for less money.
1. End the demeaning way we hire new teachers
If a freshly minted education graduate wants to make a career as a teacher in Nova Scotia, she must begin with three to five years of purgatory on the substitute teachers’ list. This often means moving back in with mom and dad and waiting by the phone each morning to see if she’ll be working that day at substandard pay. It means turning down other work so as to be available when the phone rings.
A young Cape Bretoner I know graduated from Mount Alison five years ago and approached the Cape Breton Victoria Regional School Board about a teaching position.
“You can go on the substitute teacher’s list,” he was told.
“I have a chance to teach full time in Mexico this coming year,” he replied, “How about if I do that for a year and then come back and apply for a job with the board? I’ll have learned a new language, gotten to know a new culture, and this will make me a better teacher.”
“That’s great,” the board official told him. “And when you come back, you can go on the substitute list.”
My young friend taught in Mexico for two years, then for three more in Colombia. He’ll never return to Cape Breton, because he had too much self-respect to mooch off his parents while the school board tossed him two or three days of work a week for three to five years.
The substitute teacher’s list operates as a negative sieve for potential teachers, culling those with the greatest ambition, energy, and self-respect. It is also rife with opportunities for corruption, because those four years on the substitute list offer no end of opportunities to favor family members, friends, and flatterers.
No other organization of comparable size hires its staff in this retrograde manner. School boards should adopt modern personnel practices, subjecting candidates to objective testing, rigorous interviews, careful reference checks, and probationary hiring. That’s how smart organizations hire the best people, and if students need anything, it’s the very best teachers we can attract.
2. Get superintendents, middle managers, and non-teaching principals out of the union.
Many Nova Scotians would be surprised to learn that superintendents, directors, sub-system supervisors, principals, vice-principals, department heads, and various consultants and coordinators working on secondment in the Department of Education all belong to the Teachers’ Union and are subject to the collective agreement.
Do I even have to spell out how completely crazy this is? Is there another organization in the western world that operates this way? The Superintendent is the Chief Executive Officer of the school board. Does the CEO of Bell Canada belong to the Communications, Energy, and Paper Workers’ Union? Does Donald Sobey belong to the Food and Commercial Workers’ Union? Does Joe Shannon carry a membership card in the Teamsters’ Union? The very idea is insane.
This cozy interlocking membership doesn’t simply serve students and parents badly, it’s equally a rip-off for teachers. A teacher needs a union that will honestly represent her interests when conflicts arise with a principal, curriculum supervisor, or superintendent. The school board, parents, and students need to know that the people managing the school system will not kowtow to the union. When the same people manage the union and the school system, no one can have confidence.
Note that neither of these reforms aims directly at saving money. But one would insure that the best possible people take on the most important jobs in the school system, the jobs at the heart of the system’s purpose. The other would ensure that managers manage free from relationships fraught with conflicting interests. Both reforms would make our schools run more efficiently, and that would save the system money.
These reforms won’t happen any time soon, because they require a government with the gumption to take on the union in a what would surely be a tough fight. The Dexter Government may not stray far from the center of the political road, but it has shown no appetite for taking on its traditional benefactors in the labor movement. The government underestimates the extent to which rural Nova Scotians are ready for a government that will cut the school boards’ garments to fit the cloth.
Can we talk about education funding, or only fear-monger?
Speaking on CBC Cape Breton last week, former Conservative Education Minister Jane Purves offered a rare, even-handed take on Nova Scotia’s education funding debate:
The government is genuinely looking for savings in education. I think it has been very good at promoting the truth that the syste has cost way more over the last 10 years but there are far fewer students. However, I’m wondering if in retrospect it was wise to floaat this 22 percent because they should have known what was going to happen: And what’s going to happen is that every board is going to come up with every sacred cow they can find to burn, sory for mixing metya[hors, and the government is beginning to face a tsumani of criticsm from parents, teacers, other unionized employees, and generally althought the public may be somewhat sympathetic about the need fors curs, the public doesn’t like a huge amount of noise coming when a government is trying to just do its job.
The full interview, with host Steve Sutherland, rewards close listening:
The rote response of school boards and the teacher’s union has been what we might call a confidence-draining exercise. Are we really entrusting our children’s education to a group of professionals unwilling or unable to contemplate new ideas for coping with an untenable financial situation?
The school system has been losing almost three percent of its enrollment per year for ten years, while education budgets have increased two to three points faster than inflation. Anyone can see that’s not sustainable. Surely boards, administrators, and union lobbyists can do better than to insist any change to the status quo will bring ruin to the system. Where do they expect the money to come? Health care? Highways? Increasing our already onerous debt?
Can’t we hear some new, creative ideas for how a Nova Scotia school system with fewer students might operate—on less money?
I have a few I’ll be posting in the days ahead, and I invite suggestions from readers. Surely on a topic this important, Nova Scotia can do better than obdurate resistance to change of any kind.
Snow days – another view
Educational consultant Paul W. Bennett, a former principal of Halifax Grammar School, thinks we should not be too quick to dismiss the connection between unsnowy snow days and the provisions of the teachers’ collective agreement.
[T]he key factor [in school closures] is the collective agreement which has been in place in Nova Scotia since the mid-1970s. In that sense, the Education Department is just as culpable as the NSTU.
The teachers’ agreement originally included an understanding that about five days a year would be written off as “throw-away” snow days. The Agreement with the NSTU also stipulates that if buses are cancelled and schools closed to students, then teachers do not have to report for duty. This is very unusual and has been eliminated in most other provinces.
What’s the impact? No one in NS worries if four or five days are lost each year. The problem only surfaced when school boards canelled from eight to 14 full days last school year. Then it became apparent to everyone that there was no provising for reclaiming lost days, or any real policy to contain or even limit cancellations.
I am just completing a major comparative study of school storm days, demonstrating conclusively that Maritimers are the biggest “fraidy cats” of them all. It also shows that Maritimers are the outliers when it comes to protecting valuable teaching-learning time and that this is a major factor contributing to our chronic “below Canadian average” student performance results.
Dept. of Amplification & Correction: School closures
Several readers have questioned, taken issue with, and even canceled subscriptions (!) over my criticism of overly cautious school closures, particularly my suggestion that union sympathies may play a role in unwarranted snow days.
Since when are school administrators (who make decisions about snow days) part of the teachers’ union? [TB]
Snow days are decided upon by the School Board. The teachers and their union have nothing to do with it. Teachers have to show up on snow days to babysit any kids dropped off by parents. The fact that you are so silly as to blame Unions—good heavens how silly!—I have now figured you out: Another Conservative who will blame the victims for all the country’s ills. [AMcG]
At least in HRSB, the school officials who make the call are school board Superintendents – not unionized, but management. [AB]
Another possible explanation is the requirement to please big, risk-averse insurance companies. [BW]
OK, so now I’ve done what I should have done before posting, checked with Peter McLaughlin, my ex-Daily News colleague who now speaks for the Nova Scotia Department of Education. Turns out the situation is at once more complicated than I suggested, and less clearcut than my interlocutors believe. Full explanation after the jump.
A nation of ‘fraidy cats?
This is what a snow day looks like in Nova Scotia in 2010:
Ridiculous. Ludicrous. How does this happen? Is it yet more proof that Environment Canada/CBC weather hysteria has destroyed our ability to distinguish normal weather from that which is dangerous? Is it further evidence of our society’s atrophied ability to assess and manage risk? Of our obsession with danger? Have we become a nation of ‘fraidy cats? A friend offers an alternative explanation:
They haven’t filled their quota of snow days.
Gotta get ‘em in, in other words, like the employee who makes sure to take all her available sick days, lest she “lose” them. And it’s well to remember that the school officials who manage these decisions belong to the belong to… the teachers’ union.
