Teachers’ vote results tonight

Parents and students will know this evening whether their schools will be open next week.

After studying the tentative deal reached this week between the B.C. Teachers’ Federation and provincial negotiators. teachers are voting across the province today.

BCTF president Jim Iker is scheduled to release the results of the vote at 9:30 tonight in a webcast from the union headquarters.

The six-year agreement is the longest term ever negotiated for a union that has worked under imposed terms for much of the past 30 years.

It contains a “re-opener” clause that could be triggered by the result of the government’s appeal of a pair of B.C. Supreme Court decisions on teacher staffing provisions removed by legislation in 2002. The case is scheduled to be heard in October by the B.C. Court of Appeal.