It seems evident that the STF failed to make its point that such enrichments only exist because teachers willingly volunteer their time.
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So what’s all the hoopla about cancelling — or, better put, modifying — a high school basketball tournament because striking teachers partially withdrew their volunteer services?
Well, it’s a big deal. A real big deal. For starters, when it comes to sports versus what goes on in classrooms, it’s not much of a contest.
By no means is this an attempt to endorse our misplaced priority that sees problems in classrooms as less important than more visible high school sports.
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Moreover, the problem here isn’t just sports. Often choir, musical theatre or other extracurricular activities can be just as competitive and similarly elevated by students — and, worse, parents — to unmerited levels of significance in the greater scheme of things.
Nor is this meant to suggest that many succeed in life without having developed the broader scope and perspective most often honed through extracurricular involvement in high school and well before.
What it does, however, is reflect the reality that many recall their high school experience revolving around sports or other extracurricular activities. As suggested, they are a very big deal.
And the political implications of losing these opportunities is something the Saskatchewan Party government seems to understand better than the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation (STF).
It was a politically strategic mistake for the STF to withhold teachers’ extracurricular involvement in Hoopla — Saskatchewan’s provincial high school basketball championship tournament.
Whether it’s necessarily the turning point in favour of the government as some are already suggesting seems a little premature.
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But it seems evident the STF failed to make its point that such enrichments only exist because teachers volunteer their time — something teachers do outside the confines of a union contract.
This was obviously the point the STF was trying to make when it decided to withdraw its support last Thursday and Friday, resulting in a significant alteration of Hoopla (scaled back to a one-day, one-game-for-each-team event on Saturday) and a similar downscaling of the Optimist band festival.
Undoubtedly, the STF didn’t make this decision lightly.
Probably, it was a choice made out of frustration over the obstreperous way this government — and particularly Education Minister Jeremy Cockrill — has chosen to negotiate. In fact, government has often been downright dishonest with teachers and the public as a whole.
But make no mistake, this was the STF’s tactical choice. For STF leadership to suggest the Sask. Party government was somehow responsible for a decision made by the teachers’ union leadership was never going to fly.
Perhaps it was a decision driven by the union’s frustrations that the government simply refuses to address classroom size and complexity in the contract, but it was still the union’s choice.
It wasn’t going to make students or parents more appreciative of the value of teachers who volunteer their time to make such events happen.
This was a miscalculation — one in which the STF should have realized it had more to lose in goodwill from students and parents than it had to gain.
Obviously, the STF wanted to make the argument that missing a single basketball tournament isn’t as important as the bigger issue of overcrowded classrooms. But, more obviously, winning this argument requires teachers to keep goodwill on their side.
The Sask. Party was smugly gleeful on budget day as it watched students confront STF president Samantha Becotte in the rotunda of the legislature, demanding to know why — if teachers had their backs — they were now taking something away from them.
The high school basketball season lasts from November to March, making it the longest major extracurricular event of the high school year. As such, Hoopla is especially important to small-town schools.
Knowing the importance of goodwill and having acknowledged it was in this fight for the long-haul, this was a strange choice for the STF.
Unfairly or not, this has allowed Premier Scott Moe and Cockrill to further vilify teachers.
Murray Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
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