Secondary school teachers in Fort Frances, Rainy River, and Atikokan on Friday voted 90 percent in favour of a tentative agreement reached with the school board last month.
“We ended up with a 90 percent ratification vote,” said Brian Church, president of the local bargaining unit. “The bargaining team is pleased with that result.
“You can only hypothesis about that other 10 percent because the vote was just a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’” he remarked.
He added there may have been a few people who only had an issue with one portion of the agreement, but not the whole thing.
“Our goal from the start was to achieve a fair settlement and I think we achieved that,” said Church.
School board trustees will vote on the agreement during their regular monthly meeting tomorrow, which will be held at Donald Young School in Emo starting at 7 p.m.
Education Director Warren Hoshizaki had said last week that the board would not vote on ratifying the agreement until the teachers had done so.
In related news, local elementary school teachers are looking to ratify their tentative agreement—also reached with the board last week— before tomorrow afternoon so the board also can address their deal at Tuesday night’s meeting.
Details of both agreements won’t be released until both sides have ratified them.
If either agreement is not ratified, teachers and the board would have to resume negotiations.
“If it didn’t get ratified by us or the board, then negotiations would start up again,” noted Church. “I don’t believe either side wants to begin again.”^He stressed he “didn’t expect” there to be any problems from the board’s point of view in ratifying their deal tomorrow night.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
