CLASSROOMS IN CHAOS AS COMPLEXITY TEAMS FAIL IMPLEMENTATION

EDMONTON, AB--(BUSINESS WIRE)--“A new school year has begun and ‘chaos’ remains the best description of Alberta’s public school system,” says CUPE Alberta President Raj Uppal.

“We highlighted to the Minister of Education at the end of June the issues already experienced in the creation and implementation of complexity teams throughout Alberta. Due to a lack of clarity around the permanence of funding for these positions, school boards often created only temporary positions, which meant that the most experienced professionals were unable to reasonably apply for these critical jobs.

“In other cases, we have seen that school boards simply added new funding that was targeted for complexity teams into their general revenues without addressing the urgent needs for which they were intended.”

CUPE Alberta called on the Minister to implement the following measures to address the overarching problem of complex classrooms on a more permanent basis:

• Reimplement robust early intervention funding
• Create permanent and sustainable positions to address current complexity
• Ensure that these professionals are paid a living wage to attract and retain them in the positions
• Provide permanent and stable funding so school divisions are able to plan for the future and hire qualified individuals who can make a career in these positions, providing long term support and stability in the classroom

“We were disappointed that the Minister could not find an hour in his schedule over the summer to meet with us, the front-line workers, ahead of the school year,” says CUPE Alberta’s Alberta Education Employees Committee Chair, Nicole Spring. “Sadly, this means that children and teachers will not be getting the supports they need to address a problem that is only getting worse, with a UCP Government that doesn’t seem to know what it’s doing.

“In spite of throwing dollars at a problem they don’t fully understand, Alberta remains the province with the lowest funding per student in Canada and classrooms in our public schools continue to be overcrowded making learning conditions atrocious,” Spring adds.

“What we need is stable funding, permanent positions and strong wages to attract and retain the quality of educational professionals necessary to support our students, now and into the future,” Uppal concluded.

:clc/cope 491