Education battle moves from classroom to courtroom
Posted October 14, 2014 7:34 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The picket lines may be down, but the battle between the BC government and teachers continues today in the province’s highest court.
Victoria is appealing a ruling on an issue that has twice gone the teachers’ way.
In 2011 and again in January of this year, the BC Supreme Court ruled the province violated teachers’ Charter rights in 2002 when it legislated away parts of teachers’ contracts dealing with classroom structure, including things like class-size limits and staffing ratios.
Government lawyers are in the BC Court of Appeal today, trying to overturn that.
“They would argue that this is a matter of public policy. The teachers would argue that it is a matter of collective bargaining — it’s working and learning conditions,” says Charles Ungerleider, an education sociologist at the UBC and a former deputy minister of education.
“The interesting [question] is what counts as public policy. The courts will have to decide.”
“Our hope was that government would have sat down with us and worked out a way on how we could have implemented the Supreme Court decision from January,” says BCTF Presdient Jim Iker.
The hearings will take several days, but a ruling might not come for months. Regardless of the decision, the fight will then very likely go to the Supreme Court of Canada.
