Alberta Politics: UCP leadership candidates’ cagey answers at forum sponsored by teachers’ union include promises to delay new curriculum

Hey! Never mind defunding the police. What about defunding public education?  Complaining about a call by Public Interest Alberta to phase out funding for independent schools, Danielle Smith once asked: “How about we go the other way?  Candidate Daniel Smith not so long ago during the time she worked as

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Alberta Politics: Motion to debate mediator’s recommended contract sets stage for confrontation at Alberta Teachers Association meeting today 

Delegates to the Alberta Teachers Association annual meeting in Calgary who agree with three former ATA presidents that a mediator’s recommended contract would be “wholly inadequate” hope to get a motion on the agenda this morning to have the assembly consider and debate the recommended settlement. ATA President Jason Schilling

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Alberta Politics: Three former Alberta Teachers Association presidents urge teachers to reject mediator’s recommended contract

Three former presidents of the Alberta Teachers Association have written a strongly worded open letter to Alberta public, Catholic and francophone schoolteachers throughout the province urging them to reject an “unacceptable” recommended settlement by a mediator in their current round of contract negotiations. Former ATA president Frank Bruseker, at right,

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Alberta Politics: Will students learn ‘financial literacy’ or corporate propaganda from Alberta’s $5M curriculum ‘investment’? 

There’s nothing wrong with a little financial education, but is that what Alberta students will be getting from the grade school “financial literacy” program Alberta Education Minister Adriana LaGrange announced at a news conference yesterday? Alberta Teachers Association President Jason Schilling (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). Ms. LaGrange said the United

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Alberta Politics: ATA calls UCP bill to strip it of disciplinary role ‘vindictive attack’ and ‘sad effort’ to distract from premier’s failures

The Alberta Teachers Association yesterday accused the Kenney Government of planning “a massive power grab” with Bill 15, legislation to strip the association of its power to discipline members and replace it with a politicized process run by a government-appointed commissioner. The bill isn’t what’s best for students or education,

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Alberta Politics: Kenney Government backs off plan to immediately implement widely condemned K-6 curriculum draft

Alberta Education Minister Adriana LaGrange yesterday executed a reluctant partial climbdown from Alberta’s controversial draft kindergarten-to-Grade-6 curriculum, announcing the Kenney Government will delay implementation of changes to how four subjects are taught in elementary schools. Educators mostly cautiously praised the announcement as a step in the right direction.  Alberta Teachers

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Alberta Politics: Teachers overwhelmingly reject Alberta’s draft K-6 curriculum, but that’s unlikely to change Jason Kenney’s mind

It won’t come as a shock to anyone in Alberta that the Kenney Government’s draft Kindergarten-to-Grade-6 curriculum is a dangerous and ideologically motivated dud, or that most professional teachers despise it.  Still, kudos to the Alberta Teachers Association for actually going to the trouble of commissioning an exhaustive professional review

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Alberta Politics: Kenney Government suddenly backs away from long-brewing big battles with nurses and teachers

Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government has suddenly retreated from controversial battles with nurses and teachers that were a priority for Premier Jason Kenney and his inner circle almost since their election in the spring on 2019. Over the Labour Day weekend, a representative of the Alberta Health Services bargaining committee

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Alberta Politics: Teachers give Education Minister Adriana LaGrange a 99% non-confidence vote – but it’s Jason Kenney who’s driving the school bus

Ninety-nine per cent of the delegates to the Alberta Teachers Association’s virtual annual representative assembly voted Sunday to affirm a motion of non-confidence in Education Minister Adriana LaGrange.  There’s no question that as education minister Ms. LaGrange has possessed a sort of reverse Midas touch – virtually every policy the

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Alberta Politics: Recall bill’s bar is so high, no MLA needs to lose sleep, but municipal provisions of Bill 52 have potential for mischief

Laws that let voters recall representatives with whom they’ve grown dissatisfied have an undeniable appeal, even as they threaten to unleash constitutional mayhem and make some jurisdictions all but ungovernable. So it was one thing for Jason Kenney to promise to implement this hardy perennial of Alberta’s aspirational politics when

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Alberta Politics: Teachers are bound to be furious about UCP’s Christmas coup to consolidate control over their pensions

If the Kenney Government’s Christmas Eve coup to consolidate control over $18 billion in Alberta Teachers Retirement Fund assets shows anything, it’s that the United Conservative Party’s investment strategy is as good as its political strategy! Or maybe we should put that the other way: that the government’s political strategy

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Alberta Politics: Handpicked UCP advisors call for mention of residential schools to be erased from primary grades’ social studies curriculum

A recommendation by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s handpicked curriculum advisors to strip all mention of residential schools from the province’s Kindergarten-to-Grade 4 curriculum “will perpetuate systemic racism through whitewashing,” says Melissa Purcell, the Alberta Teachers Association’s staff officer for Indigenous education. “The Indian Residential School system was created to erase

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Alberta Politics: Order saying Alberta schools won’t have to enforce social distancing lands like a sucker punch

Whoever it was in the Alberta Government that decided it would be a good idea to risk springing the news on the public that COVID-19 social distancing rules won’t apply to classrooms just hours before schools reopen was seriously mistaken. The United Conservative Party government’s “near-normal” back-to-school scheme was already

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