Centennial Secondary School on Palmer Road in Belleville is one of the high schools affected by the teachers’ work-to-rule campaign. Photo By Robert Champagne, QNet News
By Robert Champagne [1]
BELLEVILLE – High-school teachers have started picketing outside Ontario schools, including those in Hastings and Prince Edward counties, as negotiations for a new contract continue to drag on.
Students will not be affected by information pickets and a limited withdrawal of services that started Tuesday, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation says.
Among the activities that teachers have withdrawn from are participation in Education Quality and Accountability Office [2] testing and preparation, participation in unpaid staff meetings outside the regular school day, and providing comments on report cards.
Information pickets are taking place outside all secondary schools before and after school hours and at lunch hour, as well as outside Bay of Quinte MPP Todd Smith [3]‘s Rossmore office and Hastings-Lennox and Addington MPP Daryl Kramp’s office in Madoc. Both MPPs are members of Premier Doug Ford’s Conservative government.
A picket is planned outside Smith’s office at 7:45 a.m. Wednesday.
The teachers’ union voted in favour of a strike mandate [4] on Nov. 18. That vote does not guarantee a strike, but allows the union to call one should the negotiations with the Ontario government break down.
The secondary teachers’ union cited several issues that it says have not been addressed in the bargaining: the government’s refusal to acknowledge the negative impact of larger class sizes, mandatory e-learning and the loss of thousands of teacher and support-staff positions.
Locally, District 29 of the teachers’ federation represents approximately 430 teachers, occasional teachers and student-services staff at schools in Picton, Belleville, Quinte West, Bancroft and Madoc.
Stephen Lecce, Ontario’s minister of education, released a statement Tuesday saying that the teachers’ job action is not good for the province’s students.
“I’ve been clear – I want to get deals that keep the children of this province in school,” said Lecce.
“This escalation to a partial withdrawal of services, including targeting math supports and report cards, hurts our children the most.”
Schools will remain open as usual during the job action. The local schools have approximately 4,600 secondary students.