Special Education

The Calgary Public Board of Education plans to save $12 million in 1994-95 by eliminating designated ESL, special education, and resource teaching positions. Instead of designated positions in these areas, teachers will have to be "generalists," according to a quote from the Chief Superintendent. Educators predict that "special education" students will no longer receive the extra support that they require and that all students will suffer because of increased demands on regular classroom teachers.

Parents are concerned that cuts to special education will impact on their children, as indicated by letters to the editor of the Calgary Herald. It may well be that parents (that is, mothers) will feel compelled to take on more volunteer work in their children's schools or that the low-paying work of child care aides, traditionally filled by women, will be increased. The Calgary Board hired approximately 450 teacher and child care aides in 1993-94 (not counting ESL assistants); it will be interesting to see whether this number increases as "specialist" teacher positions are eliminated.

English as a Second Language

The elimination of designated ESL teachers in the Calgary Public Board of Education is in contrast with previous practice which treated ESL teachers as outside of the pupil/teacher ratio; that is, as specialists who were allocated where needed.

Again, this is not the first attack on such programs in Calgary. In 1992, the "ESL program was targeted for a cut of 30 percent, or $1.5 million, by the Calgary Board. As a result, the Coalition for Equal Access to Education was formed, through the efforts of various community groups, to fight the cuts and to "ensure equal access to public education for all children in Calgary regardless of cultural background, first language, or colour" (Coalition pamphlet).

In the end, the ESL program was cut by 15 percent. In more concrete terms, 32 ESL teachers (of 100) were cut in the spring of 1993, and were replaced by ESL assistants or teacher aides. An ESL teacher with the Board made the following comments after recent discussions with officials: "We met with the Senior Administration last year at this time when they were proposing these huge cuts to ESL and they were patronizing. ... And when I looked around the room... [I thought of] how heavily we are women, ESL teachers are very much a female group. ... [When a teacher questioned why physical education programs, for example, couldn't be cut] one of the senior superintendents, his; reply to us was 'we could never cut phys ed teachers, they are specialists'."

Her comment indicates the extent to which ESL programs are marginalized (viewed as non-core) within the system and reveals the gendered nature of the ESL teaching cohort in this Board. Suneri Thobani's comment that cuts in Alberta disproportionately affect women workers is reflected here, as it is in the following discussions of cut to ECS programs.