Parents and students across B.C. prepare for provincewide teachers strike

VANCOUVER - Fresh out of the education program at Simon Fraser University near Vancouver, it's been a tough school year looking for work for Peter Hartwick.

The 26-year-old is a trained, certified teacher, but with an ongoing labour dispute that has hung over the province's schools — culminating in a full-scale walkout set to begin Monday — Hartwick hasn't been able to do much actual teaching.

"With the ongoing strike, human resources isn't really taking applications for new jobs," Hartwick said in an interview. "They're doing more crisis control, so there haven't been a whole lot of hires."

Paradoxically, the looming three-day walkout may actually provide Hartwick and a former university classmate with a few days of work. He and a friend have posted an ad on Craigslist offering to run a $40-a-day camp for children affected by the strike, focusing on outdoor activities and environmental education.

"We thought with the strike, there might be the opportunity to break into some education-related work and keep our resumes fresh with working with young kids, while also helping out parents who might be stuck in a bit of a bind," said Hartwick.

Such makeshift daycamps are just one of the options parents have been left to consider for the three-day walkout.

There are a handful of similar online ads offering various forms of childcare, and local recreation centres are calling in staff to run daycamps.

Some parents are scrambling to find childcare or rearrange work schedules, while school administrators are preparing to open their doors with skeleton staffing to watch over any students who do show up.

And even before then, some high schools students are advocating for their own walkout on Friday to ensure their concerns are taken into account during what has become an increasingly heated labour dispute between teachers and the provincial government.

Jason Harrison, a 43-year-old stay-at-home dad in Vancouver, was already expecting to be taking care of his preschooler next week. They'll be joined by his other two children, in kindergarten and Grade 3, along with two of his friends' children he's agreed to take care of during the teachers walkout.

"We're already planning on bringing school stuff home to make sure they have their math books and their writing books," said Harrison.

"Technically, the school still has to have supervision, so if parents really wanted to, they could drop them off, but it's much more likely that they're going to try to find something else."

Harrison said the small inconvenience facing parents is worth it if it means the provincial government starts listening to teachers.

"I think the province is taking a really hard line on it," said Harrison. "They've been decreasing funding to education for quite a while, which I'm not very happy with."

The level of provincial funding for education is just one of the points of contention in the current education debate.

The provincial government is quick to point out that education funding has, in fact, increased, even as enrolment is decreasing. The latest budget includes an additional $165 million over three years to address classroom composition.

The B.C. Teachers' Federation, on the other hand, says education funding has not kept up with inflation, which the union argues is the same as a funding cut.

In the current dispute, the teachers are seeking improved benefits and a 15-per-cent wage increase, while the Liberal government insists a new contract cannot cost the province any additional money.

Amidst all the heated rhetoric, some students feel that their voices have been lost in the back-and-forth between the union and the government.

A Facebook group has surfaced urging high school students to walk out of class on Friday afternoon, and thousands of students have indicated they plan to do so.

Whether that actually happens remains to be seen, but Grade 12 student Tomas Rapaport said he and his peers want to ensure their interests aren't lost in the debate.

"I feel that the negotiations have reached a certain point where both sides have been saying they want to have a positive impact on the lives of students, and perhaps both sides haven't been acting in a way that would truly represent (students') views," Rapaport said in an interview.

The teachers have been on a limited strike since September, but due to essential services legislation, that job action has been restricted to skipping administrative tasks such as filling out report cards and marking exams.

The Labour Relations Board ruled earlier this week that teachers could stage a walkout for three days.

The provincial government has tabled back-to-work legislation that would prevent the teachers from walking out, but it could be more than a week before the bill is passed in the legislature.