Good morning.

Friday marks the end of week two of the Alberta teachers’ strike. And it doesn’t seem like kids will be heading back to school any time soon.

The government’s negotiating team and the Alberta Teachers’ Association returned to the bargaining table this week, with teachers having presented a new proposal. While there aren’t details about what the offer was, there’s still no deal.

Wages, classroom supports and caps on class sizes have been the dominant issues in the contract dispute.

On Thursday, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, speaking at an Edmonton Chamber of Commerce event, said she would like to form a commission on education to help address classroom complexity, one of the main sticking points between government and teachers.

“We think that this issue around complexity is the one that we hear about from teachers, that the specialized learning needs a little bit more ’hands on,’” Smith said.

Jason Schilling, president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, said in a statement the union is not looking for more commissions or committees.

Teachers “are looking for actions that will directly improve their classrooms,” he said.

The government has offered a 12-per-cent pay raise over four years and a promise to hire 3,000 more teachers, but that was soundly rejected before teachers walked off the job.

Smith made her remarks Thursday as police estimated between 8,000 to 10,000 teachers and supporters marched through downtown carrying signs and chanting loudly.

Ashley Pardy, a teacher attending the rally, said she went to show that teachers “mean business.”

Pardy said she would like to see Smith “take our kids’ futures more seriously and actually put the money where it needs to be.”

When it comes to classroom complexity, Alberta teachers have been saying they do not have support to handle the various needs.

Increasingly, classes are composed of children with diverse needs, including learning difficulties such as ADHD, those on the autism spectrum, those with behavioural challenges and students who are learning English as a second language, the union says.

“We have kids coming in to our classrooms who have complex needs and we don’t have the resources, like the programming, the educational assistants or the teachers to deal with those needs,” Schilling told The Globe in an interview.

Classroom complexity is also becoming a negotiating point in collective bargaining across the country.

It was the top priority for the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation in 2024 when it launched a strike. And complexity and class sizes will be a top issue when the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario enters bargaining with the province next year, said union president David Mastin.

“Fewer students in a particular classroom gives us more of an opportunity to achieve the learning goals and expectations that each of the students in our class have,” he said.

How all this plays out in the Alberta negotiations remains to be seen.

Teachers appear to be dug in, ready to keep pushing for smaller classes, which they say gives them a fighting chance in getting through the province’s curriculum without forcing too many of them out of the profession from burnout.

Meanwhile, the province says the pot of money available to fund the system is fixed at $2.6-billion, and that isn’t increasing.

The fall legislature session starts the last week of October, and on Thursday, Smith reiterated what government officials have said several times now: If it looks like there’s still no movement toward a deal by then, she will consider forcing teachers back to work.

With a report from The Canadian Press

This is the weekly Alberta newsletter written by Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.