Ottawa, Halton high school teachers to stage administrative strike

TORONTO – High school teachers in Ottawa and Halton Region will begin an administrative strike May 21.

The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation says the local unions for the Ottawa-Carleton and Halton boards will partially withdraw services, which means teachers won’t add comments to report cards or attend staff meetings or school board meetings and will hold some picket lines over the lunch hour.

Regular school operations will continue, as will field trips and extracurricular activities.

READ MORE: ‘It’s just unfair for students’: Durham Region teachers strike

High school teachers in the Toronto-area regions of Peel, Durham and the Sudbury-area Rainbow District are on strikes that have kept more than 70,000 students from class for weeks.

The Ottawa and Halton teachers’ partial strike comes as elementary teachers across the province are staging a similar job action, withdrawing from administrative duties but continuing with classes and extracurriculars.

Those three school boards where high school teachers are on strike have asked the Ontario Labour Relations Board to declare them illegal, and the hearing is set to continue into next week.