Catholic school board rejects ‘road map' deal
Hamilton's separate school board says it won't back the government's deal with the Ontario Catholic teachers' union — and money isn't the sticking point.
Instead, conditions around hiring practices and diagnostic tests are standing in the way of an agreement between the board and its teachers — an agreement Premier Dalton McGuinty has said must be struck by the end of the month or else he'll recall the legislature to get it done.
The premier wouldn't say how the threatened legislation would accomplish this.
It could impose a contract on teachers, take over control of school boards or attempt to mandate a wage freeze.
“We obviously understand and want to do our part in terms of the difficult financial situation in the province,” said Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board chair Pat Daly. “It's not the financial parameters that are a concern for us. It's the nonfinancial.”
Neither Daly nor public school board chair Tim Simmons has expressed concern over the impending deadline, with Daly noting that negotiations often, if not always, run into the school year.
“It's nothing to be alarmed at,” he said.
Simmons, meanwhile, said the province's demands don't carry a realistic timeline. His board plans to resume talks with teachers' unions in September.
“These things move at their own pace,” he said.
Daly's and Simmons's comments have been echoed across the province. Last week, the group representing Ontario's public school boards balked at the challenge of having to negotiate nearly 400 collective agreements inside of four weeks.
And Halton's public school board chair, Don Vrooman. has called the Aug. 31 deadline unrealistic, saying “moving aggressively and unilaterally to force deals on our unions may very likely lead to job actions such as strikes that would ... not be in the best interests of our students and communities.”
The Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association, or OECTA, was the first education union to strike a deal with the province, which is calling for a two-year wage freeze affecting more than one million public sector workers to trim a $15-billion deficit.
Two other unions have since signed on: the French teachers' union, which inked a deal with the province Thursday, and one representing social workers, speech pathologists and psychologists.
According to Education Minister Laurel Broten, the latest deal is nearly identical to the two-year OECTA agreement, which she has called “a road map” for other unions across Ontario.
The province's two largest teachers' unions — the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation — have rejected the deal and insist instead on bargaining with boards at a local level.
The OECTA agreement includes a general wage freeze, although it does allow newer teachers to move up through the salary grid. That increase is funded by all teachers taking three unpaid days off in the second year of the contract.
It also cuts the number of annual sick days to 10 from 20 and puts an end to retirement payouts for unused sick days.
What Daly finds unpalatable, however, is conditions around filling permanent teaching positions and diagnostic tests.
The deal requires boards to hire from a pool of occasional teachers with seniority and relevant qualifications — a change aimed at making hiring practices more consistent and transparent across Ontario's 72 school boards.
Teachers, meanwhile, will have more discretion over how and when they administer diagnostic assessments, such as in-class reading tests.
If boards and unions can't strike deals by the end of the month, existing contracts roll over at a collective cost of $473 million, according to the Ministry of Education.
In Hamilton, a salary grid rollover alone will cost the separate school board $1.2 million and the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board more than $2 million — sums that aren't factored into either board's budget for the upcoming school year.
“If boards do not find a way to work with us to not have a pay increase roll through on Sept. 1, they will need to find those dollars somewhere else,” Broten said. “We will not allow them to raise class sizes, we will not allow them not to roll out full-day kindergarten.”
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