The new school year is just around the corner, but B.C.’s teaching corps has been hard at work educating the masses for a good part of the summer break.
Summer school’s focus this year: Labour Relations 101 – How to alienate everyone in the lead-up to contract negotiations.
Some excerpts from this year’s curriculum.
As the world careers dangerously into another economic car crash, kick-start negotiations with demands better suited for an episode of Fantasy Island: 26-week fully paid leaves of absence to provide compassionate care to anyone; another five days paid bereavement leave atop the five already in hand; five annual paid days for professional activities; and on and on.
Aforementioned sitcom pilot will be put to the test now as bargaining gets underway in earnest with opportunities to disrupt classes mere days away. However, it would be a safe bet that not many parents would be amused by teacher demands thus far.
From lessons in labour relations to carbon dioxide story time: the B.C. government’s plan to achieve public-sector carbon neutrality is proceeding apace, but the casualties are starting to pile up.
Being under that government mandate, public schools also figure heavily in this yarn.
As pointed out in “Smoke and mirrors” (Full Disclosure – issue 1139; August 23-29), the provincial government’s Pacific Carbon Trust (PCT), which was established in March 2008, has thus far transferred $18 million in taxpayer funds from public institutions like school districts and health-care units that have been unable to meet carbon-neutral targets to bankroll carbon-reduction initiatives of B.C.’s top greenhouse gas emitters.
The cash-strapped Surrey school district, whose rapid growth leaves it no chance of being carbon neutral, had to cut a $500,000 cheque last year to the PCT.
So the green math problem here: scarce financial resources are being taken out of the province’s school system and invested in a government-mandated market for carbon dioxide.
The shell game would be at least somewhat palatable were the reallocation of tax dollars changing the weather, convincing companies to clean up their acts or being applied to programs subject to some form of meaningful measurement. But it’s batting zero for three in that inning.
Last but not least on the summer school math program is BC Hydro, which recently took an enthusiastic shin-kicking from a government review panel.
Recommendations from the panel included cutting 1,200 jobs and more than $800 million in spending in a top-heavy Crown corporation that has increased staff numbers 41% in the last five years, but watched its productivity fall.
The findings underscore some of the questions raised previously in this space (“Site C in need of plan B” – issue 1135; July 26-August 1) about imprudent Hydro spending.
Atop that Public Offerings laundry list: why invest $10 billion in a mega-power project that will displace cheaper energy with more expensive energy?
The answer to that and other questions raised herein is that better training in math basics needs to start in our public school system, and especially with those who are doing the teaching. •
