Teachers, students and parents set to rally in Regina for increase in public education money

Trina Miller's daughter always required extensive support at school because of  severe developmental delays and speech apraxia. The Rosthern mother says those services have eroded over the years due to continued underfunding for public education.

The Saskatchewan Teachers Federation is scheduled to hold a rally at the Saskatchewan Legislative Building on Saturday. Educators, parents and students will call for more public education money amid rising inflation and school enrollment.

"Our teachers are tired, our parents are tired, we just need the government to get on-board with us and actually give the public education system predictable, reliable funding," Miller said. "We don't have that right now. We really haven't for an extraordinary long time."

Miller said she saw the effects of underfunding first hand when her daughter was attending Rosthern Community School and the Prairie Spirit School Division had to cut a large chunk of its education assistants (EAs).

"She went from [having] a full time EA to getting an EA about a third of the time," Miller said. "How is she going to get a meaningful education when two-thirds of her support is gone?

"We've seen her stagnate. We've seen her teachers become increasingly frustrated because they know what good education looks like."

Miller has moved her daughter from Rosthern Community School to Valley Action Abilities Inc., which is able to provide personalized programming for her needs.

Peggy Welter, a teacher at Cupar School northeast of Regina, said she's never seen educators this worn down in her 14 years of teaching. She added that some teachers she knows have classes of 40 or more kids. 

Welter, who is a Saskatchewan Teachers Federation councillor, said that's why she decided to help organize this weekend's Regina rally.

"My job is getting increasingly harder every year and by this point in my career it should be getting easier," Welter said. "Why is that? It's the lack of resources. Not just people resources, its infrastructure."

Welter is worried about recruiting and retaining new teachers and educational assistants, as their workload continues to increase because of budget shortfalls, she said.

To bring back per-student funding to what it was a decade ago, the province needs to spend at least $400 million more on public education each year, according to Saskatchewan's Teachers Federation.

"Students need more than the government is giving them, they are reducing services, all of these supports for them and teachers can only do so much," Welter said.

Three urban school divisions in Saskatchewan are teaming up to ask the provincial government for mid-year funding adjustments amid rising enrolment.