School will start on schedule in September, but later in the month teachers will vote on whether to authorize a strike.
Bill Forst, president of the Sunshine Coast Teachers' Association, said polls of teachers suggest there will be a strong vote in favour of the strike Sept. 20 to 22, although that doesn't necessarily mean job action will follow.
"It's certainly something we don't want to do. We want a negotiated settlement," said Forst. "The bottom line is, we've gone a whole year without a contract."
Joe Brooks, chair of the school board for School District 46, said it's too early to predict what will happen in local schools this fall.
"Everything right now is speculative, whether they're going to go to strike or do some kind of withdrawal of services, as they did before," Brooks said. "Then we'll have to sit down as a board with the superintendent and decide what we will do."
Brooks said while local school boards have a say in contract negotiations, the provincial government determines the negotiating position on issues involving money.
"The majority of things [under negotiation] are now on the provincial table. Very few things are on the local table," Brooks said.
Forst said for teachers, there are three big issues at stake in these contract negotiations: class size limits, maintaining the right to strike and a salary increase.
There are strong feelings around the question of class size and special education formulas, which the government took out of the teachers' contract in 2002 and replaced with looser, legislated class limits. Forst said teachers want a return to the former limits of 30 students in high school classes and 26 in practical classes such as shop.
"We can't live with class sizes of 34, 35, up to 37," said Forst.
Even if the labour dispute does end in a teachers' strike, it's not clear whether schools would close. Although the government declared schools an essential service in 2002, there is no definition of what, exactly, the essential service levels would be. The Labour Relations Board would define essential services after a strike vote, said Forst, adding, "We don't have a clue what they would look like."
The teachers' position is that "none of us are essential," said Forst.
"We're pretty darn important, but nobody is going to get sick or die if teachers go on strike."
School superintendent Stewart Hercus said in the most recent teachers' job action, teachers stopped doing extracurricular activities and noon-hour supervision, so school district staff took on the supervisory tasks.
"We're going to do everything we can to keep the kids in school," Hercus said.
