B.C. teachers have won a 12-year battle with the provincial government over bargaining rights, but what that means for Burnaby schools is still up in the air.
Monday's major B.C. Supreme court decision found that provincial government legislation that limited teachers' bargaining rights and removed limits on class sizes and the numbers of special needs students was unconstitutional.
Since the court decision reinstates language from the teachers' 2002 contract, those limits should have been in place all along.
"We have some classes in Burnaby with up to seven and eight special needs students in one class, so that's quadruple of what the limit would have been at that time," said James Sanyshyn, president of the Burnaby Teachers' Association.
Because the 2002 language has been retroactively reinstated, the teachers can file a grievance for that period and ask for remedies at the bargaining table, Sanyshyn explained.
Sanyshyn said that grievance may be filed provincially by the B.C. Teachers' Federation or locally, on a district-level.
"But certainly what has happened for over 12 years in Burnaby needs to be taken into account in whatever kind of grievance we file," Sanyshyn said. "We've been quite good with class sizes in Burnaby. ... But where we have suffered in Burnaby is around the composition issue."
According to Sanyshyn, there are more than 400 classes in Burnaby with more than three special needs students.
"If we had a magic wand and we could wave it today, there would be a whole lot more teachers in Burnaby," he said.
In 2011, the BCTF won a similar court case, where the government's Bill 28 was struck down and deemed unconstitutional, but the Liberals responded by bringing in Bill 22, which in Monday's decision was described as virtually identical.
As a result, the province was ordered to pay the teachers $2 million in damages, plus legal costs. This may cause some last minute changes to B.C.'s budget, which will be announced on Feb. 18. The BCTF is also in the midst of contract negotiations with the province, and Sanyshyn wants to see more funding for education and teachers' wages from the province.
"They need to bring dollars to the table, which will work in opposition to their political goal, which is to balance the budget at any cost," he said.
