LAKELAND - The Government of Alberta wants new legislation to provide more transparency regarding the disciplinary actions taken against teaching staff.
Announcing her intentions late last month, Alberta Education Minister Adriana Lagrange doubled down on the plan last week, using a 15-year-old case of an alleged sexual assault as further reason to improve the integrity of the current incident reporting system.
The minister has been calling for an online registry and database that will be available to the general public. She says Bill 85 - the Students First Act - aims to amend current legislation by expediting and efficiently cancelling necessary teaching certificates, creating consistent criminal record checks across all school boards while involving the Minster of Education’s department in every complaint made or filed against all members.
Many of the updates in the proposed legislation are welcome, say provincial school officials like Marjorie Charles, the president of the Northern Lights Local 15 in the Lakeland area. In fact, the desire for more transparency has been an continuing request from the ATA for many years.
“It is my assumption that the act intends to make information of misconduct more easily accessible and transparent to the public; again something that the ATA has requested previously but was not possible without such legislative and regulatory changes,” she said.
The bill—which is intended to provide the public with information, transparency and confidence within the education system, will hopefully be a positive endeavor overall, said Charles.
“Students, parents, and the greater community should always have the utmost confidence in their teachers. If this act can improve and strengthen that confidence with a few minor logistical changes, then it should be positive," she said.
The legislation — including more authority being given to the Education Minister to revoke credentials from teachers charged with Criminal Code offences — is catching a lot of headlines, says Charles, but the reality is that the minister already has over-arching powers in that area. Charles said the legislation won't significantly affect teachers in the Lakeland area.
“Little change will actually take place in the process of handling teacher discipline in instances of gross misconduct. Under current legislation, the Minister of Education can already strip a teacher of their teaching certificate essentially removing them from the teaching profession… In terms of local impact, little will be felt as we have minimal issues of misconduct relating to teachers in the area,” she said.
Public Database
While much of the legislation would see minor changes, the implications of the information being online, said Jonathan Teghtmeyer, the ATA’s Associate Coordinator of Communications, is new.
Currently, the information remains public, but is generally handled on a case-by-case basis through individual schools. The online access will give everyone access to every school.
“Any member of the public could always contact our office and find out whether there were findings of unprofessional conduct against any teacher. You could always contact our office and request to see any discipline hearing reports—related to our process. The fact that its sort of self-serve now would be new and the fact that it implies that it's completely open to all teachers—including those that aren’t in our process—like private and reserve school teachers— that element is new.”
He says the new database will be a significant upgrade to existing online systems, improving and modernizing the process overall which is extremely important for operations. The concern, however, in regards to the misuse of the proposed system is a challenge that the ATA hopes the legislation will address, he said.
“We’re mindful that there is a potential for misuse or perhaps there is potential for harassment associated with this,” he said, but adding that after consultation on the informational purpose for the system with the ministry, the ATA is hopeful it will serve transparency uses.
Explaining that many of the actual complaints reported would be considered as minor by the public, or are from one teacher about another, Teghtmeyer said the new, all-access plan may be uploading a lot of mundane information. He said any serious allegations have always been forwarded to the minister's office.
“We have an obligation by law to investigate every complaint that comes to us, but they didn’t necessary or automatically get reported to the minister's office at the same time," he said. "The majority of our cases are actually complaints laid from one teacher against another teacher…they are colleague versus colleague complaints that often don’t involve students.”
According to the proposed legislation, all teaching “certificates dating back to 1954 would be included in the online registry, while suspended and cancelled certificates will date back to 1990”. However, if an instance occurs where the individual's safety is concerned —for both teachers who have an active membership and revoked certificates—a case-by-case basis for all parties will be considered.
The proposed legislation entails that a general panel of three committees will join the judiciary process on complaints filed across the ATA and other school systems—appointed by both the ministry and the ATA, but the final decision to revoke or cancel a certificate will continue to lie with the minister.
Local school board
Northern Lights Public Schools board of trustees chairperson Karen Packard says that in light of the initial announcement of the Students First Act, the school district will always do its due diligence when hiring staff in regards to the background checks updates in the legislation.
“Our HR department has and will continue to require a criminal record check when new staff are hired, and ensure that our teachers have valid teaching certificates, which also require a criminal record check before being issued,” she said last week.
Case comes to light
In her latest offensive for the new legislation, LaGrange said she was "appalled" that allegations of physical and emotional abuse against a Calgary-area teacher in 2006 weren't relayed to the police at the time.
Michael Gregory was suspended by the ATA in 2006 for allegations from several students of physical and emotional assault. In February of 2021, a lawsuit against the estate of the now-deceased Gregory, alleged 17 counts of sexual offences—against six of his former students.
LaGrange says the ATA mishandled the initial complaints. The ATA says they followed the correct procedures — including contacting the Education Minister at that time.
Current ATA President Jason Schilling says the association followed procedures during Gregory's case by suspending the teacher and reporting the findings to the Minister of Education —who didn’t notify police.
The directive to create this legislation, Schilling said, is an attack on the association, an attempt to avoid curriculum issues and to destabilize the teachers.
“The teaching profession has a long history of being unified and collegial and today’s most recent threat will rip the profession apart and jeopardize the stability of education in our schools,” Schilling told reporters Thursday.
In the near future, he said the ATA plans to fight the proposed changes and the government's attacks on the integrity of the association.
Lagrange said the proposed legislation is a work in progress, but is moving forward.
“I look forward to providing Albertans with updates on this important work as we move forward," she told local media last week.
