A teacher’s annual fee set at $1,194
Delegates to the 94th Annual Representative Assembly (ARA) rejected a proposal by Provincial Executive Council to balance the 2011/12 budget by eliminating a number of intermediate and clerical staff positions to save $711,800.
Delegates firmly declared that teachers should not do to Association staff what the government of Alberta is doing to teachers.
Funding for public education announced in the recent provincial government budget will not be sufficient for school boards to maintain the current level of service, and many boards have indicated that teaching positions will be reduced for the 2011/12 year. Based on these announcements, Council had proposed to ARA a budget based on the loss of 1,000 members.
Even taking into account the proposed staff reduction and a number of other budget adjustments, Council was facing a deficit of $1,133,300, which would require a fee increase for each full-time member of $51, or 4.58 per cent. That percentage increase is very close to the salary increase of 4.54 per cent that teachers will receive on September 1, 2011.
The five-and-a-half-hour budget debate featured arguments on both sides of the staff reduction proposal. Some believed that the Association should not be immune to the effects of the budget shortfall experienced in schools. Others believed that members should show a compassion not displayed by the provincial government and school boards and that they should be willing to pay the additional $2.50 per month, or $30 per year, that would be required to maintain the Association’s staff complement.
In the end, the proposal to amend the budget by reversing the proposed staff reductions received solid support.
Following that, delegates looked for other areas that could be cut to soften the fee increase of $81 that they were now facing. They cut in half the budget for the development fund that can be accessed by Council members to improve their knowledge in areas related to their Association assignments and approved a reduction of $14,100 for conference attendance in the Government program area.
Delegates looked for other ways to save fees, but were unable to find program cuts that would be sufficient to balance the books without seriously affecting services for members. While some expenditure lines could be trimmed by relatively small amounts, that was not going to provide a solution to the deficit problem. The Assembly approved the budget with a deficit of $1,828,500 and then approved a full-time member’s fee of $1,194 to fund the deficit.
To justify the fee increase, Greg Jeffery, district representative for Edmonton District, asked delegates to consider fee increases relative to salary increases since the inception of the five-year agreement with government. He pointed out that teacher salaries have increased by 22.8 per cent since the deal went into effect, while fees have risen by 19.2 per cent. He also pointed out other financial benefits of the five-year deal, such as a reduction in pension contribution rates and the lump sum payment of $1,500 received by teachers, which were not included in the 22.8 figure. Jeffery also said that the Association’s annual fee in 2007 is 1.33 per cent of the average salary at the time; the proposed fee of $1,194 is 1.29 per cent of the average teacher salary in the last year of the agreement.
The fee for associate members, which is 15 per cent of the full-time fee, was set at $179.10 per year.
