From the President's Desk

Greetings to all NTA members, and a sincere wish for a Happy New Year. This has been a very busy time at the NTA office but we are finally settled and ready to serve you from our new location. The NTA is now the proud owner of a new office complex located at 2738 Abe Okpik Crescent, which is across from Aqsarniit School in Iqaluit.. We have been working steadily to make this purchase a reality for the past two years and it is finally done. The renovations are now complete, the only thing remaining is for some audio visual equipment to be installed in the conference room. The complex also has 6 apartment units that are leased to the GN and used as staff housing. Our former office is now a residential unit and it has been leased out since mid December. This new office location will be the NTA headquarters for many years to come and will also provide some revenue to the Association.

Our members have been very clear with us that addressing the escalating cost of living is one of their main priorities. The cost of food, flights, rent, fuel, merchandise, childcare (you name it) has consistently increased and has had a noticeable impact on the disposable income of NTA members. We have contracted out the services of Vector Research from Toronto who are designing an on-line survey for our members. This survey will gather all kinds of information on issues such as cost of living, violence in school, workload, negotiating priorities etc… They will then analyze this data and write us a report on its findings. We can then use this valuable information to address these issues with the GN in the hopes of alleviating some of the financial hardship faced by our members, as well as trying to improve the overall working conditions for our teachers. It is very important that we get a HUGE number of our members fill out the on-line survey, which will be user friendly and also quick to fill out. There will also be some security measures taken to ensure that only NTA members can fill it out and that each member can only do it once. This will eliminate any questions surrounding the methodology of the study. Each teacher will receive further instructions in the mail from Vector Research out of Toronto. We had originally hoped to be able to have this survey done in early February but we are quite certain that it will not be ready by then. It will take a fair amount of time to translate the on-line survey into Inuktitut and it also needs to go through some testing to ensure that it is problem free when our members go on-line to fill out the questionnaire.

A quick note to let you know that we will be re-launching the “Make Learning Safe” campaign this winter. This time, however, it will be done by the NWTTA and the YTA as well. Their posters will look very much the same as ours except theirs will be in different colors and using their logo of course.

Take care everyone and best of luck for a great 2008.

Jimmy Jacquard

President
Nunavut Teachers’ Association