Alberta teachers and students will return to classrooms Wednesday after the government moved to end the province wide teachers strike with back to work legislation.
More than 700,000 students have been away from school for more than three weeks, which the government says has caused significant disruption to learning.
Jason Schilling, head of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, said the union’s executive council will meet soon to determine next steps
Bill 2, called the Back to School Act, imposes a four-year agreement covering about 51,000 public, separate and Francophone school teachers. The province says the terms match a memorandum of understanding reached Sept. 23 between the Teachers Employer Bargaining Association and the Alberta Teachers Association. Teachers later rejected those terms in a province-wide vote.
The government will create a Class Size and Complexity Task Force to address rising behavioral and learning support needs. It will implement recommendations from the Aggression and Complexity in Schools Action Team, which delivered a draft report to government this month.
Information on class sizes and class composition will begin being collected from school divisions in November and be published annually. The government says that data will help target resources where they are most needed.
Teachers who fail to comply with the order to return to classrooms can be fined up to 500 dollars per day. The ATA or its locals can be fined up to 500,000 dollars per day for illegal job action.
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