Alberta school boards ratify teachers' deal by deadline

A last-minute wrinkle in the deal between the Alberta government and the province's teachers to ensure five years of labour peace was ironed out just hours before the deadline, Education Minister Ron Liepert said Thursday night.

It's "the dawn of a new era," said the minister.

Liepert said he received word just after 6 p.m. that the Grande Prairie Public School District, the last of six holdout districts, had agreed to the deal. The deadline for all 62 school districts and their teachers to ratify the deal was midnight Thursday.

Heather Welwood, president of the Alberta School Boards' Association, defended the school boards who waited until the last minute to ratify the contract.

"They were doing their fiscal responsibility of making sure they had the dollars to cover whatever they signed up with their staff," she said.

Five other holdout school boards school districts signed the deal earlier in the day; Buffalo Trail Public Schools Regional Division, Lakeland Roman Catholic Separate School Division, Pembina Hill Regional Division, Prairie Land Regional Division and Wetaskiwin Regional Division. The province's 34,000 teachers had already agreed to the offer.

Liepert said the five-year contract will allow educators to turn their attention to other issues facing the school system.

"The ever-increasing number of students who have learning disabilities and what do we do for those students. We can work on trying to increase our high school completion rate," said Liepert.

The deal, announced in November by Premier Ed Stelmach, will see the province take over about one-third of the teachers' $2.1-billion pension liability.

In the deal's first year, salaries will rise by three per cent, the equivalent of what's currently being deducted from paycheques to cover the pension fund shortfall.