History - Surrey Teachers Association

The Surrey Teachers’ Association has been in existence since 1941.

We are a union of professionals representing 6000+ public school teachers in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. The first President of the Surrey Teacher’s Association was William Davidson in 1941. During the 1941-1942 school year, F. McKinnon became President of the Association.

In 1974, Surrey teachers, led by their president Lloyd Edwards, walked off the job, traveled to Victoria and protested on the class size issue.

This pressured the government of the day to negotiate with the BCTF a commitment to reduce the Pupil Teacher Ratio in the province by one in each of the next three years. This had a dramatic impact on class sizes as the PTR went from 22.68 in 1972-1973 to 16.70 in 1981-1982 and thousands of new teachers were added to the school system. The Surrey Teachers’ Association was incorporated as a society on June 27, 1975. Doris Hahn was the Associations’ President at this time.

The Surrey Teachers’ Association became a local of the BCTF on November 7, 1987.

Following legislation, 98 to 99 percent of BC teachers, including teachers in Surrey, voted to become members of the BC Teachers’ Federation. The Surrey Teachers’ Association became a local of the BCTF on November 7, 1987. David Chudnovsky was the President of the STA during this time and later went on to become the President of the BCTF from 1999 to 2003. To learn more, view the full list of our past presidents.

Our history is closely connected to the history of the BCTF.