N.B. education minister asks unions to delay class size cuts, save jobs

New Brunswick's education minister is asking the province's teachers unions to give up smaller class sizes next year to avoid job cuts.

Kelly Lamrock told reporters on Monday that under an agreement with teachers, all class sizes are supposed to shrink by one student each.

But Lamrock said that means 200 classes across the province will be one student over the maximum class size next year. The education minister said if he has to hire 200 extra teachers, he'll have to cut resource teachers who help students in need.

"What we've asked the teachers union to consider is this: that we could avoid a lot of cuts and guarantee that we can keep every teacher's position working if they would agree to suspend that for a year," Lamrock said.

"If 200 teachers would agree to take one extra student this year, we could guarantee the jobs of all the literacy mentors, methods and resource teachers, and others in the system."

Lamrock said the 200 teachers who agreed to take an extra student would get a bonus of $1,000 each.

Brent Shaw, the president of the New Brunswick Teachers' Association, said the extra money will not convince teachers to increase their class sizes.

"If there's that kind of extra money just sitting out there somewhere we would sooner see it, instead of trying to offer a teacher to break their own collective agreement, we would sooner see it go to resources in our classrooms," Shaw said.

The previous Conservative government signed an agreement in 2006 that called for all classes to shrink by one student each per year over four years.

The education minister hopes the two teachers unions and the province can agree on the proposal.

"We're certainly hopeful in the days ahead that the union will find some common ground to discuss this with us so that we can, I think, do what's right by kids, which is ask a few teachers to take on an additional student and protect vital services," Lamrock said.