Alberta’s United Conservative government calls it the “Aggression and Complexity in Schools Action Team.”
A 25-member team of superintendents, trustees, speech language pathologists and other stakeholders, formed in June, to help create recommendations to help the province deal with an increase in the number of students with complex needs in Alberta classrooms.
On Friday, Premier Danielle Smith and Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides released the team’s report.
“What they heard was very concerning,” Smith said.
“The causes of aggression and classroom complexity are difficult to determine. They can involve academic, behavioral, socioeconomic, linguistic, emotional, and mental health factors. Our government asked the action team to not only assess the problem, but also to focus on solutions.”
“What they heard was very concerning,” said Alberta Premier Danielle Smith as she released the report from the “Aggression and Complexity in Schools Action Team,” on Friday.
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While many of the future actions will depend on the results of data on class sizes and compositions being collected throughout the month of November and made public in January, the report identifies a number of key challenges and contains a number of recommendations, including:
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- developing class size criteria
- more coordination and communication across provincial ministries to help families navigate supports and to clarify educator roles
- expand program unit funding (PUF) for children with disabilities before they enter Grade 1 — funding the UCP government slashed several years ago
The government also commits to hiring an additional 1,500 education assistants over the next three years, in addition to hiring 3,000 more teachers.
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Asked by reporters at Friday’s news conference what stuff is “already in the works,” Nicolaides responded by saying “nothing’s in the works at the moment. Of course, we’re just releasing the report. We’re going to bring it in front of the cabinet committee, and we have, of course, the ability to allocate resources through that cabinet committee.”
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“Next steps will be as early as January,” Nicolaides added.
To which Smith added, “the cross-ministry collaboration that we used to assemble our cabinet committee, that came from the insights of this report. That’s when we realized that we had to bring mental health and addiction to the table, children and family services, assisted living and social services.”
Class complexity and class sizes were one of the key issues that prompted a strike by Alberta’s 51,000 teachers last month, which ended when the UCP government passed legislation forcing them back to work and enacted the notwithstanding clause to prevent the bill from being challenged in court.
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The President of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, Jason Schilling, responded to the “action committee” report by saying the union supports many of the recommendations.
But he also expressed cynicism, hoping it’s not just government rhetoric.
“I’m fairly untrusting of what I hear and from politicians, I need to see the actions, I need to the funding, and I need to see the changes in our classrooms and I need to them move forward with that because words are words, but we actually need to some real changes in our schools,” said Schilling.
“If government was listening before, we wouldn’t be in this position,” added Schilling. “For instance, the premier said. ‘How did we get classes of 40? I don’t know how that happened.’”
“The lack of funding over the course of the last 10 years is how we got to this spot. It was their decisions on budget making that got us to place, So, I am fairly cynical.”
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Rather than wait until the government collects more data to help decide what needs to be done, Schilling claims there are steps the government can take immediately, such as hiring more teachers and educational assistants, and splitting classrooms.
During contract negotiations the ATA called for the hiring of at least 5,000 more teachers — 2,000 more than the province is now promising.
Schilling also takes exception to Nicolaides’ plan to create a teacher’s advisory council to ensure the government hears directly from teachers.
“You don’t need a teacher advisory circle,” said Schilling. “You have the Alberta Teachers Association, who represents 51,000 teachers across this province, who clearly has indicated time and time again the concerns and issues that teachers see within their classrooms and the solutions they put forward in order to make schools better for students and themselves have that been ignored.”
The Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents 12,000 education workers in Alberta, also weighed in on the “action team” report.
In a written statement, CUPE Alberta President, Raj Uppal, says “there’s nothing new in the roadmap.
“We all know we need more staff in the classrooms and the UCP needs to make it happen.”
“The issue of classroom complexity isn’t all that complex. We need more staff, not more reports,” Uppal added.
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He adds, the government’s promise of 1,500 new educational assistants is about half of what is needed to catch up to 2019 levels.
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