Too few specialized teachers for too many Langley students meant a $1.5 million judgment in favour of the local teachers union recently.
The Langley Teachers Association (LTA) launched a grievance last year against first the Langley School District and, eventually, the BC Public School Employers Association (BCPSEA) over a lack of resource and English Language Learner (ELL) teachers in local schools.
Resource teachers deal with students who are behind their peers and need extra help, ideally working with them one-on-one a few times a week. ELL teachers work with students who are learning the English language.
The LTA launched the grievance because resource teachers are supposed to have a maximum of 15 students on their caseload each year.
In some Langley schools, there were so few resource teachers and so many students needing help, the resource teacher had 20 to 30 students, said Wendy Cook, president of the Langley Teachers Association.
“It was unmanageable,” Cook said.
READ MORE: District struggles to find enough specialty teachers for Langley schools
The situation for ELL teachers was more complicated, but they were also in need of more resources, Cook said.
The issue in many cases was simply that there aren’t enough teachers available to take on the slots, even as the district tries to hire more.
“We understand there weren’t a lot of teachers to take those spots,” said Cook.
In 2016, the BCTF won a landmark ruling against the provincial government, which under the Liberals 14 years earlier had stripped language about class sizes and specialist teachers from the BCTF’s contract.
The decision meant hundreds of teachers had to be hired to meet the restored requirements, and districts across B.C. have been scrambling to find enough teachers.
Ultimately, what the LTA wanted was for Langley to hire more resource teachers, said Cook.
With that impossible at this point in the school year, the $1.5 million will be used by local resource and ELL teachers for either classroom equipment and resources to help their students, or it can be used for extra training and professional development for the teachers themselves.
The district has been working to hire more teachers, with staff attending job fairs and recruiting across Western Canada.
There should be an increase in the number of resource teachers next year, said Cook.
The settlement money will come from the Ministry of Education.
“As a result, it doesn’t come out of Langley’s [school district] budget,” Cook said.