Ontario’s back-to-school plan is ‘morally unconscionable,’ teachers tell labour board
Franco-Ontariens #Franco-Ontariens
The Ontario government’s back-to-school plan is “morally unconscionable” and even dangerous, the province’s teachers’ unions are arguing in an appeal now before the labour relations board.
The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation noted in its filing that at the time it was writing its appeal, Premier Doug Ford had “just limited social gathering sizes to 10 indoors and 25 outside across the province because COVID-19 cases continue to rise. And yet the (ministry of education) has maintained normal indoor class sizes of between 20 and 35 or more across most of Ontario.”
The OSSTF also said that student cohorts remain at 100 under the return-to-school guide “even as social bubbles are maintained at 10. In respect of our children and their teachers and other education workers, the Crown offers protection to them which is manifestly less than for the rest of us.
“This is morally unconscionable and legally wrong.”
The labour board appeal was launched by the high school teachers’ union, as well as the Association des enseignantes et des enseignants franco-ontariens (AEFO), the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario and the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, which collectively represent more than 190,000 teachers and support staff.
The case was filed before school began and continues this week, dealing with a preliminary claim by the Crown that the Ontario Labour Relations Board does not have any authority to hear an appeal because no health and safety orders were issued.
The unions argue that the government has not taken “every reasonable precaution to protect workers” in schools and failed to “adequately respond” to their concerns, and is violating the workplace health and safety act.
“By reopening schools without having put in place appropriate measures that offer significant protections in this regard, the (government) endangered the health and safety of all workers in significant and imminent danger in the education sector,” the AEFO said in its arguments.
The unions are proposing class sizes of 15 to 20 children in order to maintain two-metre distancing, which currently is not happening in many schools, as well as “minimum ventilation standards to address the risk of airborne transmission,” masking for all students as well as better busing safety.
The OSSTF said that by raising concerns about school reopening, the “definition of an ‘order’ has been met” and the four unions can therefore bring these appeals to the board.
In the legislature on Tuesday, Education Minister Stephen Lecce defended the government’s plan, saying $1.4 billion is being spent “to keep every school safe in the province of Ontario” — funds that include provincial and federal monies, as well as boards’ own reserves for hiring teachers, custodians, cleaning supplies and purchasing personal protective equipment.
“What we are doing in every board in this province, urban and rural, is providing our school boards with more funding to reduce classroom sizes,” he said. “Our aim is to ensure the layers of prevention are in place to ensure every school is as safe as we can make it as we respond to COVID-19.”
But NDP education critic Marit Stiles noted that despite more than 50 new COVID-19 cases in schools, boards continue to “collapse” classes and make them larger due to insufficient funding for more teachers.
“A parent from Collingwood called me (Monday) to share that in their school — and there’s so many like this — four kindergarten classes of 20 have been collapsed into three classes of 26. Will the minister stop trying to sell us a bill of goods and start taking action to ensure the safer, smaller classes?” she asked.
Toronto’s public and Catholic school board are among those in which funds for additional staff are being directed to neighbourhoods with higher numbers of COVID-19 cases. Large urban boards also have high school classes of about 15 students, who attend in person half the time and learn online the rest.
However, the largest classes are kindergarten and grades 4 through 8, where parents have reported as many as 30 students in the room.
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Lecce said the province has provided funding to school boards “to ensure that these classes are safe. We’re doing everything we can, supported and endorsed by the chief medical officer of health of this province.”
He said some 1,3000 additional caretakers are also being hired.
Has your child been assigned to a large class or has your school kept class sizes low? We want to hear from you. Tell us about your family’s experience with in-person school by emailing schools@thestar.ca. Please include your school board in the email.
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