School really is out for summer.
The Vancouver School Board made the decision to cancel all summer school classes July 2.
The VSB was waiting for the Labour Relations Board’s ruling on whether providing remedial courses for students who’d failed classes would be ruled as an essential service, as they were June 27, and to see whether progress was made at the bargaining table.
The B.C. Teachers’ Federation and the B.C. Public Service Employees’ Association announced Wednesday they had agreed on B.C. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Kelleher as mediator. But Kelleher determined mediation “is not indicated at this time,” according to a joint statement emailed by the BCTF. Both parties had hoped to reach an agreement by June 30 but teachers and their employers are still too far apart.
VSB board chairperson Patti Bacchus said administrators have determined the LRB ruling doesn’t affect Vancouver students. Students that have failed can retake the course next year at school, through Adult Education or the Vancouver Learning Network of online courses.
“I suspect this will cause a great deal of challenges in terms of timetabling and staffing because students had anticipated taking remedial or course completion courses over the summer and planned their timetable assuming they would have those credits and now, of course, they won’t,” Bacchus said.
The VSB fielded roughly 17,000 registrations for summer school, which includes 1,000 registrations to redo grades 8 to 12 courses students had failed. The VSB determined the cancellation of summer school would leave no student unable to graduate on time.
Adult education operates during job action because its teachers work under a separate contract. Online teachers are covered by the same contract as kindergarten to Grade 12 classroom teachers. Online summer school courses aren’t proceeding at this time.
Bacchus said the district has lost a few hundred thousand dollars in tuition from international students. But she believes school boards retain 20 per cent of strike savings, while the Ministry of Education holds on to 80 per cent.
“That has put us in a slightly better position financially than forecasted,” she said. “But we don’t know how this situation ends.”
How suspending summer school this year will affect summer school enrolment by international students next year is a concern because the market for international students is competitive. Although tuition has been refunded, international students may have spent money on flights or homestay deposits.
“But my real concern is for students and families here,” Bacchus said. “We’re also going through summer now with this cloud of uncertainty over the whole system creating anxiety for parents and students and, frankly, everyone who works in the school system including teachers who have already lost pay and have no certainty of when they’ll get paid again.”
She’s concerned the ongoing strife is reducing faith in public education.
“You couldn’t probably do more to destabilize the system than what we’re seeing right now,” she said. “And it’s ironic because… stability was one of the words that [Education] Minister [Peter] Fassbender repeated again and again as a justification for wanting a 10-year deal and ‘stability, stability,’ and here we are. I’ve never seen things so destabilized in the public school system as I have now.”
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