Barring a last-minute contract resolution over the weekend, elementary school teachers at Lakehead Public Schools plan to begin withholding job-related duties on Monday."
However, the work-to-rule action won’t affect students in the classroom, said Mike Judge, the local president of the Lakehead Elementary Teachers of Ontario.
“As of Monday morning teachers will be at work and in the classrooms doing what they do best,” Judge said on Friday, hours before Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario president Sam Hammond was expected to unveil details of the planned job action.
“What won’t be happening is any element of professional development toward provincial initiatives. Basically teachers are going to do what they’re paid to do, which is teach kids.”
The list of what they won’t be doing is extensive.
Teachers will no longer take part in any Education Quality and Accountability Office testing, marking or test preparations with students.
They also won’t prepare any report-card comments or complete June report cards, though they will provide school officials with final marks.
Teachers will also stop performing duties of a computer site administrator, won’t attend staff, divisional or grade meetings or act as teacher-designates or teacher-in-charge unless they’ve already agreed to an annual stipend.
They will refrain from ministry meetings or activities of any kind, not meet with student work-study teachers or conduct any reading, writing or mathematics assessments other than those deemed necessary to report on student progress.
Students will still receive extra help when needed and teachers will still take attendance, maintain contact with parents and provide scheduled supervisory duties.
Lakehead Public Schools superintendent of business David Wright said the intent of the job action was never to interrupt classroom activities, so he's not surprised by the union plan.
"It's going to cause a little bit of grief for the administrators in our schools, but they're seasoned professionals and I have the umost faith they'll be able to handle this," Wright said.
Judge said the last thing teachers want to do is walk of the job.
They’ve been without a contract since Aug. 31, 2014. Teachers are in a legal strike position as of Sunday.
The current move is a step they feel they’ve been backed into, an attempt to get serious talks going at the bargaining table.
“I’m hopeful that cooler heads will avail and that the Ontario Public School Boards Association will remove these unreasonable strips from the bargaining table and we can get back to meaningful talks and get back to business as usual,” Judge said.
“We do not want to be in this position, but unfortunately here we are.”
The union is concerned the province wants to rewrite the definition of a principal and remove the ability for teachers to be the curriculum leaders in Ontario schools. The union says it could lead to the loss of hudnreds of ETFO jobs.
Talks continue at the provincial level.
