Murray Mandryk: Sask. classroom problems about funding, not ...

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Lost in the furor where we see the Saskatchewan Party government fighting with teachers over everything from contract negotiations to gender identity is the reality that the problems in today’s schools have little to do with teachers.

Problems in school are the creation of government policy choices.

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One gets the politics. There’s an old saying among political strategists: If you are in trouble, change the channel and turn up the volume.

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And Premier Scott Moe certainly turned up the volume at a Sask. Party partisan fundraising dinner last Thursday, when he announced pending parental rights legislation — presumably, to keep those activist teachers in check.

The Sask. Party seems intent on blaming everything going wrong in classrooms on a supposed “woke” agenda driven by teachers — a notion appealing to some older conservatives who don’t have much contact with schools.

This can be political gold in today’s culture wars, where politicians simply take aim at issues we didn’t talk about in the past and then somehow blame groups like teachers for creating them.

Why teachers — many of them also rather conservative in nature, themselves — would have a left-wing “woke” agenda is unclear and never explained. Obviously, it must be another case of professionals being misguided.

But from there, it’s been easy and maybe even politically effective for the Sask. Party to brand teachers as selfish and greedy, through taxpayer-financed billboards with exaggerated claims of having the richest teachers in Western Canada.

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Sure, unions tend to ask for more than is reasonable at contract time. But does anyone seriously believe  classroom problems are caused by excessive teacher wages?

A new teacher with a degree makes the princely sum of $60,000 a year. One wonders why the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation (SFL) has failed to counter the billboards with that point.

There again, maybe the public does see through the Sask. Party government’s nonsense.

There are always jokes about their excessive summer holidays, but reasonable people know teachers work hard at a tough job and aren’t societal villains with some irrational plan to ruin our kids. Most have a fond memory of a teacher they had, or know them now as friends and neighbours.

If anything, the government’s billboard campaign and portrayal has made normally passive teachers mad. If they weren’t politically active before, they likely are now. The Sask. Party government got a taste of that during the May Make Noise for Education rally in front of the legislature.

And they have legitimate reason to be mad, because most everything the government is saying about the problems in Saskatchewan education today belies reality and even truth.

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For example, the right-wing Fraser Institute — hardly a friend of teachers and the left-wing crowd —  recently released a study showing the biggest increases in enrolment have been in Alberta (12.4 per cent) and Saskatchewan (6.9 per cent).

By no small coincidence, these are the two provinces that also witnessed the biggest decline in per student funding (Alberta, 11.6 per cent; Saskatchewan 10 per cent) when adjusted for inflation.

Saskatchewan under this government has gone from the highest operational funding per capita to sixth place in Canada — the reality since this government rolled back education funding by $54.2 million in the 2017 provincial budget.

Consider the ramifications to this day, and who is to really to blame for problems in the classrooms.

Is it the teachers’ fault parents are now paying hundreds of dollars for lunchtime supervision? Are teachers responsible for most city classes having more than 30 kids and rural classes having two- and sometimes three-grade splits?

Can you blame a “woke” agenda by teachers on the fact that it takes months to get appointments with specialists like a speech pathologist?

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We are starting a new school year with a new education minister who’s offered little to suggest he’s interested in the real problems in public schools, like overcrowded classrooms and underfunding.

Yet it appears this government is more interested in talking about greedy teachers and gender identity.

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

1. Murray Mandryk: Sask. Party government dogma interfering in education
2. Teachers' union frustrated with province not addressing growing class sizes

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