Teachers and educational workers in Guelph were back on the picket line on Wednesday as part of a fifth one-day strike by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation.
The job action closed all schools in the Upper Grand District School Board and the Wellington Catholic District School Board.
Paul Rawlinson, the OSSTF’s district president for Upper Grand, said the last place any members want to be is on a picket line.
“But they also understand that what we’re facing in the funding cuts from the provincial government are devastating and they’re long term,” he said. “We can challenge that view of public education now, which our members are doing, or if we choose to ignore it and back away from the challenge, then there will be consequences for our members and our students for years to come.”
This is the second one-day strike that has affected Guelph since the union began one-day walkouts on Dec. 4.
The work-to-rule campaign has also postponed Grade 9 EQAO math testing, which was scheduled to get underway this week in Upper Grand.
Rawlinson said the feedback from parents and students has been positive.
Rawlinson said with the changes, some class sizes could be as high as 45 students even after the Ontario government offered to lower the average funded class size from 28 to 25, but not back to 22, where it was before education reforms were launched last March.
He said the keyword there is “average.”
“If you have a small class that you need to maintain for special needs students or specialty classes that usually run at a smaller number, you have to compensate for that on the other side of an average number, which means you got to have larger class sizes somewhere else in the system,” he explained.
Another issue at the bargaining table has been cost of living wage increases, but Rawlinson said it’s not OSSTF’s number one issue.
“It’s an issue that is being put forward by the education minister to distract from the reality,” he said. “The issue is not about cost of living increases, it’s about the quality of education that kids are entitled to. That’s why we’re out there doing what we do.”
OSSTF members will be returning to work on Thursday, but all four major teaching unions in Ontario have started work-to-rule campaigns or have planned strikes in the coming days as they try and hammer out new contracts with the government.
Catholic schools in Guelph and Wellington County will be closed on Tuesday as part of a one-day strike by the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association.
The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario says it has given five days’ notice that workers in Toronto, York Region and Ottawa will walk off the job on Monday.
Teachers in Ontario’s French system say they will start a work-to-rule campaign on Thursday that will target administrative duties.
— With files from The Canadian Press
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