STF is sick of hearing ‘no’ from government, Becotte tells Bray

The president of the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation is fed up with being denied by the government.

“It is very disappointing that we are at this point,” Samantha Becotte said.

“We really don’t have any other option to move the process forward, because government just continues to say ‘no.’ ”

Becotte joined the Evan Bray Show on Tuesday after many student-athletes and parents protested the union’s latest sanctions. Those sanctions could cancel Hoopla, the provincial high school basketball championship which is set to begin on Thursday in Moose Jaw, along with a number of other extracurricular events.

On Monday, the union issued notice ahead of a provincewide strike on Wednesday, and said teachers will withdraw support for extracurriculars on Thursday and Friday.

Students waved posters and chanted “We want Hoopla!” after the Saskatchewan High Schools Athletic Association gave the union and provincial government a deadline of 3 p.m. on Wednesday to reach a deal that would suspend the sanctions. The organization warned that the tournament will otherwise be cancelled.

Becotte said students have been affected by many of the same issues as teachers, and it’s good that they’re making their voices heard.

“It’s good to see students standing up for themselves,” she said. “These high school students specifically, they have experienced a decline in the supports in their education year after year, from kindergarten until Grade 12.”

Roger Morgan, the committee chair for Hoopla, said more than 16 months of planning have gone into the event. He said the tournament was set to host 48 teams and 700 players, and expects around 3,000 attendees.

Morgan said Hoopla is more than just a tournament, and the economic losses for Moose Jaw would be big.

In an effort to get the teachers’ union back to the table, the government has promised a big funding increase in a multi-year agreement with the Saskatchewan School Boards Association. The agreement guarantees a base amount of $356.6 million for classroom supports each year for four years.

Becotte called that a “backdoor deal” and said she wants that funding written into a contract with teachers, suspecting that the money would otherwise be clawed back after the fall election.

Last week, the union offered to suspend its sanctions if the government would agree to go to binding arbitration on the issues of class size and complexity. That offer was quickly rejected.

“All we hear from the government is ‘no,’ ” Becotte said. “Even in binding arbitration, it’s not something that we go to quickly. It is a risk for teachers in this process, but we even provided that as an option to address classroom complexity and just get a decision on it so that we don’t have to have further action.”

Becotte said she warned that sanctions would ramp up after the government rejected the offer of arbitration.

“It is unfortunate that government won’t talk to us,” said Becotte. “They won’t engage in that conversation because we want to have it. We want to have solutions, but we can’t do it by ourselves.”

Education Minister Jeremy Cockrill told reporters Monday that the government has invited the union to resume negotiations, but with no luck.

“Before this week, we’ve invited them to 19 days of bargaining and haven’t got a positive response from that,” Cockrill said.

“What we have brought forward is significant – significant on salary, significant on classroom safety, significant on annualizing funding that the STF originally said, ‘Well, do we know it’s going to be annualized?’ Yes, it will be annualized. That’s what we’ve put forward.”

Cockrill noted the government has moved on a number of issues so far, but hasn’t seen any movement from the union leadership.

Instead, he said, the federation has continued with sanctions ranging from rotating strikes to withholding lunch-hour supervision and pulling extracurriculars. That could include Hoopla.

“The choice of these sanctions – and any sanctions, quite frankly – is the choice of the union leadership,” Cockrill said. “This week is particularly disappointing.”

The minister said he spoke to student-athletes and Hoopla organizers about the potential loss of the tournament, and he remains disappointed that the union “would target these types of activities that kids have worked so hard for all year long.”

“If this is really all about the kids, then as adults, let’s sit down and figure this out,” Cockrill said.