The province is planning to move forward with a four-year agreement for Alberta teachers despite the fact that some school boards have said no to the deal.
The decision came down on Monday afternoon after the province set a 3:00 p.m. deadline for acceptance of the proposed contract.
The offer was made by the province in March to the 62 Alberta school boards and teacher’s association locals.
The Calgary Board of Education turned down the deal and Chair of the Board of Trustees, Pat Cochrane, says they have process concerns and content concerns.
“The process concerns, I think, are simply whose voice was heard at the table, how did some of these things get into the document at all, why is there focus on some things rather than others? The content is kind of interesting because a lot of the content is unclear,” said Cochrane.
During a meeting on Monday, the CBE reaffirmed its position to reject the agreement.
“My dad told me when I was very young, never sign anything you haven’t read and that you don’t understand and we’re being asked to sign something and agree to something that even the people that wrote it can’t explain to us in really clear detail about what will that mean for our schools, for our students, for our teachers and for us going forward? And so our Board of Trustees said, no, we can’t do this,” said Cochrane.
The four-year contract affects about 40,000 teachers and includes a three-year wage freeze with a two percent increase in 2015-16 and a one percent bonus in the last year.
The deal would also see the province review teacher workload issues and would push school boards to make sure they moved closer to the 907 hours of provincially mandated instruction per teacher per year.
Alberta's Education Minister, Jeff Johnson, says he will introduce Bill 26 to put the deal into place.
A teacher at the top end of the salary grid currently makes $99,000 a year.
(With files from The Canadian Press)
