by Cathy Fisher I’d like to clarify some of the information in Louise Fribance’s letter to the editor, “Teachers’ requests out of reach,” published on March 14.
Average salaries quoted are for teachers with a post-graduate (Masters or PhD) degree, rather than the qualifications most teachers hold. A beginning teacher with five years of university training and a student loan debt of over $40,000 starts at $48,926. This is if they can get a full-time job and don’t find themselves working on call or in a series of short-term contracts for their first five years or more.
Teachers complete a 10-year “apprenticeship” before reaching a maximum salary of $74,353. If they undertake a postgraduate degree at their own expense, that rises to $81,489 after 10 years.
Teachers in Powell River get 15 sick days per year, which can be banked, but no more than 120 of these days can be taken in a school year and they certainly are not paid out in any way upon retirement. These sick days are like an insurance policy—they are there if we need them, but we all hope never to have a debilitating illness that would cause us to use 120 days in a year.
The Teachers’ Pension Plan is jointly funded and jointly managed, meaning both teachers and their employers pay into the fund, which is not unusual in the public sector. Together they make decisions as to how the fund will be disbursed. The perception that teachers are somehow gifted with a gold-plated pension upon retirement is ludicrous.
In 1972, after much lobbying by teachers, government added days to the school year for professional development, increasing the time teachers were on duty, without losing instructional time for students, nor increasing teachers’ pay. Teachers use these days to undertake training of all kinds to better meet the needs of their students. These “long weekends,” to which Fribance refers, are mostly unpaid.
Teachers and their employers are governed by a collective agreement which came about as a result of give and take by both parties and covers a broad range of items which have been agreed to by both the employer and the teachers. Teachers alone do not decide how much they will be paid, how sick days are allotted, the length of the school year or how much pension they receive.
I wonder if Fribance would feel that “life is pretty good” if she were to talk with teachers about the realities of life in the classroom and the impact of what this government is doing to our public education system. The long-term effects of its actions have been found by the courts to be unconstitutional. They have resulted in more than $3 billion being removed from the public education system since 2002 and have had a far greater negative impact on students than any job action teachers could possibly undertake.
I invite Fribance, and anyone else who would like to understand what really is happening in schools these days, to contact our office.
Cathy Fisher is president of Powell River and District Teachers’ Association.
