VANCOUVER—The union representing British Columbia’s 43,000 public school teachers has elected a new leader during this high-stakes bargaining year — the first time in two decades the teachers are at the table with an NDP government in charge.

Teri Mooring became president-elect of the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) on Tuesday in an uncontested election at the union’s annual general meeting. Mooring has been vice-president of the BCTF for six years and already serves as one of the lead negotiators in the teachers’ bargaining with the B.C. Public School Employers Association.

She will take over from incumbent president Glen Hansman on July 1 and continue to serve as vice-president until then.

The teachers’ new contract — which both sides hope to agree upon by the end of June — could have a major impact on students. It will be the first provincewide agreement to consider class sizes, and wages negotiated could make or break B.C.’s ability to recruit teachers from other provinces to fill its vacant posts.

The province launched a task force in 2017 to address its challenges attracting and retaining teachers. It attributed a shortage of teachers to an increase in enrolment, and smaller class sizes implemented in the 2017/2018 school year as a result of a 2016 Supreme Court of Canada ruling.

At the beginning of the 2018/2019 school year, the province’s teacher job board listed about 150 vacant full-time regular classroom teaching positions.

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Mooring’s election comes two days after the Ontario government announced plans to increase high school class sizes — a move that’s expected to cost more than 1,000 teaching jobs in the Toronto District School Board alone.

Those teachers could be prime candidates for recruitment in B.C. — but Mooring said wage increases are needed to make B.C. a better sell.

“Districts have put a lot of effort into recruiting teachers from Ontario, but the problem is an experienced teacher is going to take a $20,000 salary cut” to come to this province, she said. “That makes it a tough go — and it has been tough.”

Average starting salaries for teachers in B.C. are the lowest in Western Canada.

In a previous interview, chief operating officer of the employer’s association Janet Stewart said B.C. public schools were feeling a greater need to recruit this year but the B.C. pedagogy and comparatively high teacher-on-call wages were effective selling factors.

Mooring hopes the current round of negotiations will turn a new page for teachers.

“In the past, with the Liberal governments, we’ve been engaging in job action just to stave off concessions and cuts,” she said. “We haven’t had opportunities to make gains for a really long time.”

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B.C.’s challenges recruiting and retaining teachers are greater in the north of the province, where not enough people have been trained to work as teachers and the wages aren’t high enough to incentivize people to move.

At their four-day annual general meeting, representatives for teachers also discussed a December 2018 report on proposed changes to the way schools are funded in B.C., which the province is consulting on until next year.

The teachers were “100 per cent united,” Mooring said, in raising concerns about the proposed changes to funding and want to see commitments from the government on greater funding of special-needs programs.

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