Tagged: Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union
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.
