Dane Gibson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 10/00) - Teachers don't want to strike without their communities knowing why.

The NWT Teachers' Association has launched a series of ads to make their case about the problems they face as teachers in the Northwest Territories.

The first ad, which ran in News/North last Monday, had a compilation of testimonials by teachers discussing the extreme educational neglect suffered by all students due to the high number of special-needs children in their classes.

"These aren't stories, these are facts. This is what the teachers on the front lines are telling us," said NWTTA president Pat Thomas.

"If you have 25 children in your class and 10 of them have special needs, how do you deliver programs? When you stop and look at it, it's overwhelming."

An NWT School Divisions report released in January 1999, said about 40 per cent of the students in the system have special needs.

The report looked at many different categories of special needs; including students who were physically or mentally handicapped, speech impaired or hearing handicapped.

"The greatest programming needs in the NWT are in the numbers of students needing support and in the need for specific support in the areas of reading/learning disabilities and behaviourial disorders," said the report.

"(School divisions) are not able to adequately staff their schools with the appropriate number of qualified professional support staff and funds are lacking for specialized training of these staff," the report continued.

Thomas said they've been discussing the problem for years. Now, NWT teachers are striking for a better compensation package, special-needs support, and for lower student/teacher ratios. The issues, she said, are all connected.

"Without a doubt, we're going to lose teachers this year and we haven't been successful in attracting new ones. We want more special- needs teachers and in order to attract them, we need a better wage and benefit package," said Thomas.

"What the GNWT can't keep saying is we're doing our best and we'll do better when we have more money. That's unacceptable because we're writing off kids."

Thomas admits the high numbers of special-needs students in the NWT is a reflection of a deeper problem.

"We have children going to school hungry and abused. It will be difficult to teach them until that is addressed," said Thomas.

"The classroom can't solve society's problems, but if you don't address the needs of these children when they're first identified, the problem just continues to grow and sooner or later, the whole education system is affected."

Thomas was a long-time Northern teacher before becoming the NWTTA president. When she hears the minister responsible for the Public Service, Charles Dent, talk about a $60-million GNWT deficit next year, it doesn't move her.

"If we took the tentative agreement offered by the GNWT we would be giving up on our children," said Thomas.

"The ads we're running are a way to let the public know that we can't do it anymore without more help."