Peggy Revell
While provincial discussions between the Ontario Public School Board Association and Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario failed to deliver a four-year collective agreement last month, local negotiations between the Rainy River District School Board and local ETFO remain positive and hopeful.
“I really can’t say that the same kind of feeling that’s going on between ETFO provincial and OPSBA is here, and hopefully it will stay that way,” said Sharon Preston, president of the local ETFO chapter.
Set up in December and facilitated by the Ontario government, the Provincial Discussion Table (PDT) had hoped to establish a four-year collective agreement for elementary teachers across the province by having negotiations between the ETFO and OPSBA.
The existing collective agreement had expired as of Aug. 31. But even with an extended deadline, no agreement was reached and a public relations battle between both organizations ensued.
Local negotiations have progressed slowly, noted Preston, but are amicable, respectful, and positive, adding there is a good relationship between the union and board.
Director of Education Jack McMaster agreed the relationship between the public board and the local ETFO is a very good one.
“There is a great deal of media coverage in southern Ontario because that’s where the provincial negotiations took place,” he noted. “Now that the provincial negotiations are over, it turns to the local table and I think we’ve always been fair as a negotiator.”
Since the OPSBA and ETFO didn’t reach a four-year collective agreement through the PDT, school boards and the ETFO now are limited to establishing only a two-year collective agreement for elementary teachers, and the amount of funding that originally had been provided by the province as an “incentive” for both sides to reach a deal has been scaled back.
“We’ll have to certainly be cognitive of any stipulations that the provincial government has provided within the bounds of our local agreement,” McMaster explained.
The public board also is currently negotiating an agreement with the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation local before a Jan. 31 deadline, McMaster said, though adding the local negotiations with ETFO don’t have a deadline set.
“We’ve managed to secure local agreements with all parties who have managed to sign a provincial discussion table agreement, and I am very confident that we will sign agreements with OSSTF and prior to the Jan. 31 deadline, I’m confident that we will sign with ETFO.
“There is no deadline, so it will require a little more time, but we’ll problem-solve and resolve things,” he pledged.
Like many boards across the province that were waiting to see if an agreement would be reached at the PDT, the local public board hasn’t submitted its preliminary submission to be looked at, noted Preston. But she added the local ETFO has provided their own preliminary submission to the board since day one of meeting.
One week ago, the ETFO set a province-wide deadline of Feb. 13 for boards to put out their submissions, or face a strike vote.
“Negotiations up to this date haven’t been really forward moving,” admitted Preston. “We’ve been working on it locally, with some local language and cleaning up some language in the collective agreement.
“But we haven’t really done a lot of serious discussion about a number of articles that have any kind of monetary aspect to them.”
So it remains to be seen if the trouble spots encountered at the PDT also will arise locally.
For example, one sticking point were changes the OPSBA proposed that ETFO claimed are “strips” to previous collective agreements, including an increase in teacher supervision time and having principals decide how teachers use some of their preparation time.
“We’ve worked so hard in the elementary panel to reduce the amount of supervision time that our teachers have to do because several years ago the majority of them were doing over 200 minutes a week . . . those are really hours added into the week,” Preston explained.
“We finally, finally got a cap with 80 minutes per week of the prep time, and now OPSBA wants to go back.”
Elementary students need to be watched carefully, and teachers are willing to do their part, but Preston stressed all of the supervision shouldn’t fall on their backs. Many others, like education support professionals and even administrators, also should be doing part of that.
And currently, prep time can be used by teachers as they see needed, Preston explained, whether it’s planning a lesson, doing Independent Education Plans, meeting with parents, or professional development. But OPSBA’s proposal at the PDT would give principals a say in how that time is spent.
“These were things that we gained the last round,” noted Preston. ”And my understanding, that when everybody went into this kind of provincial discussion table, that the things that we gained last time are not to be on the table.”
OPSBA “has certainly set up a lot of negative feelings” with these proposed changes, said Preston.
“If, locally, our board puts anything on the table that’s a strip, then we will certainly not take that as being a positive,” she stressed. “And I guess we see how it unfolds after that if they’re very adamant about the suggested strips that OPSBA has put on it.”
Another key issue is a funding gap, where ETFO estimates the province provides boards with $700 per elementary student less than their secondary school counterparts.
OPSBA estimated this “gap” to be around $500.
“Nonetheless, even $500 per student difference in funding is a big gap,” Preston argued, and getting a feasible plan in place that will address this gap has been one of the goals ETFO has set.
But the province continually has put off dealing with this issue, Preston noted.
“[The government] is not appreciating how different the system was now than it was even 15 years ago,” she remarked, noting there are many wonderful programs, courses, resources, and aspects to elementary education that just didn’t exist before, but there also isn’t enough funding for them.
“Even more and more, you find that the system is being supported by individual teachers who buy their own resources and buy this and that, and that’s not the way things should be done.”
While the province is pushing for things like more physical activity for students, there also is a lack of specialist teachers being hired at the elementary level to teach areas like phys. ed., music or provide guidance services, Preston noted.
“Closing this gap would really help with this type of thing,” she explained, adding this is why one of the proposals put forward by ETFO at the PDT suggested scaling back the province’s proposed three percent raise over four years for elementary teachers so money could be put into hiring specialist teachers.
“That was one way as to how we could address somewhat the need for more specialist teachers in the elementary system,” she noted. “It wouldn’t necessarily close the gap, but it would be one step towards getting those specialist teachers into the elementary panel so that our teachers have those specialists positions as well to enhance their education, and a number of things.”
But there still is dispute over the numbers.
ETFO maintains this proposal, according to ministry officials it consulted with, fell within the PDT parameters. But OPSBA disagreed, saying it went well beyond the allotted amount of funding and would put board’s at a financial risk.
A letter from Education minister Kathleen Wynne also agreed with this.
The OPSBA also maintains its proposals during the PDT would have meant the hiring of more teachers, more planning time, improved class size, and improved benefits and working conditions.
“I really feel that the provincial government has abdicated its political leadership in this,” Preston charged.
School board membership in the OPSBA itself is a voluntary, and it’s the provincial government that controls the money, she noted, so OPSBA involvement—and being given the power to reject offers—is something she doesn’t understand.
“Last time around, when we had provincial discussions, we had discussions with the government,” she said, pointing to when ETFO talked directly to the ministry and then-Education minister Gerard Kennedy.
“This time, as far as I’m concerned, the government intruded in the free collective bargaining process by setting an arbitrary deadline,” she said. “Why did it have to be that deadline?
“Negotiations unfold, they generally don’t unfold to a deadline,” she added. “We’ve had our past negotiations where we haven’t settled until April, May of the year after the deadline of our old collective agreement.
“So I’m not sure why the government decided that it had to have [the PDT], and then it set that deadline, and then it stepped back, and it said, ‘Okay, ETFO and OPSBA, now you two figure it out.’”
