Sask. NDP says province should pay for extra teachers if students return to schools this fall

Even though it's unclear if elementary school students in Saskatchewan will return to classrooms in the fall, the provincial NDP is calling on the province to commit now to funding additional teachers and educational assistants if it does happen.

NDP education critic Carla Beck said it would help school divisions address the public health risk of overcrowded classrooms.

"Either because of the need to ensure social distancing within schools or because we've gone back to online learning and they need additional resources for students who need technology or teachers who need additional bandwidth," she said.

Beck said the NDP's concerns are based on past funding of classrooms and some of the conditions that existed prior to the pandemic. They include classes with 40 or 50 students and school buses with three students to a seat, she said.

Beck said that, before the pandemic hit, the NDP got a look at what the provincial budget for education was going to look like and some school divisions were going to get funding increases of less than one per cent.

Now that a four-year contract with teachers has been ratified, she said the government should pay for the pay increases, not the school divisions.

School division boards are now putting together budgets and would normally hire for the fall around now, she said.

Beck said the NDP wants assurances the province will be funding extra costs school divisions incur in the fall.

"If we need additional resources in order for kids to be safe in classrooms in the fall, I absolutely think that we should be providing those additional resources," she said.

"School boards can't raise additional funds. We need the Ministry of Education to raise those funds."

Beck said she understands school divisions have been asked to come up with three possible scenarios for the beginning of the school year: a normal start with all students in the classroom, one that is fully online and a hybrid of the two.

The province has not decided when elementary and high school students will return to class in person.

Minister responds

The Ministry of Education said Minister Gordon Wyant was not available for an interview Wednesday.

In a statement, Wyant said work is underway on a plan for the upcoming school year with education sector partners such as the Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation and the Saskatchewan School Boards Association.

"It is important that our sector partners are engaged in planning for what the 2020-21 school year looks like," he said.

He said all decisions will be made in concert with chief medical health officer Dr. Saqib Shahab.

Other jurisdictions have cautiously started to resume in-class learning and the Saskatchewan government has been monitoring closely to understand the experiences they have had with the school re-opening process, Wyant said.

"As Dr. Shahab has previously stated, maintaining physical distance is less practical with younger children and our focus is on minimizing physical contact and putting in place protections for not only students but staff and caregivers," he said.

Wyant's statement also said he had publicly committed to fully funding the terms of the teachers' collective bargaining agreement as early as last summer, "and my position has not changed."