Schools are empty across Alberta this morning as a province-wide teachers’ strike begins.
About 51,000 members of the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) are on strike.
The labour-management dispute affects more than 700,000 students across 2,500 public, separate, and francophone schools in Alberta.
Premier Danielle Smith, speaking to reporters in Montreal, urged teachers to come back to the bargaining table, saying the two sides are not that far apart.
Last month, teachers overwhelmingly rejected the government’s latest offer, which included a 12-per-cent pay raise over four years and a government promise to hire three-thousand more teachers to address class-size concerns.
ATA president Jason Schilling told CBC News last week that the province needs to hire at least 5,000 more teachers.
“The system is broken,” Schilling told CBC Radio One’s Alberta at Noon. “We’re in a crisis and we have to fix it. And that’s why they’re taking this stand.”
The provincial government offers some online learning support and $30 per day for children under 12 to offset the extra costs associated with the strike.
– With files from Canadian Press