Some teachers will be going back to work next week as the BC Teachers' Federation puts on a show of good faith to be fair to students on a modified class schedule.
Most students have finished the school year and the teachers strike won’t affect them much longer – but students at year-round schools will lose more valuable teaching days as the strike drags on.
That’s unfair to the five schools in B.C. with modified calendars, the union confirmed, saying that teachers at those schools will return to work to make sure that those students don’t lose more days than those on regular calendars, which the union said was 13 days.
Those five schools are Garden City Elementary and Spul’u’kwuks Elementary in Richmond, Langley’s Douglas Park Elementary, Kanaka Creek Elementary in Maple Ridge, and Cataline Elementary in Caribou-Chilcotin.
There are about 1,600 schools in the province so this will affect only a fraction of students and teachers.
Sending teachers back to work without resolving the strike would be bittersweet for one Garden City parent, who organized a rally outside of Garden City Elementary.
“That would be good as long as we fix the problem on class size and composition,” said Brandy Brundige. “To go through all this and say, let’s go back to school, well, let’s fix it so we’re not doing this in another two years.”
School boards at those five school districts appeared to be closed and did not return calls.
