By Dianne Cornish
REVIEW STAFF
Attendance at Flamborough and area public schools dropped dramatically last Friday as a result of the uncertainty surrounding elementary teachers and whether they would hold a planned one-day political protest that day over the provincial government’s Bill 115.
Reacting to last-minute news that the teachers had cancelled the walkout, the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) reversed its earlier decision to cancel classes, amending its web site at 5:30 a.m. Friday to announce that classes were back on. The reversal sent parents scrambling as they tried to amend plans to have their children stay home for the day or be looked after by friends, relatives or daycare centres. In many cases, plans could not be altered.
The disruption centred around a decision by the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB), which met late into the night on Thursday before arriving at a decision about 4 a.m. Friday that the planned political protest would be deemed an illegal strike. The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO), which had announced the action last Wednesday, cancelled the walkout as a result of the decision.
Jackie Penman, the HWDSB’s corporate communications manager, apologized to parents for the inconvenience and uncertainty, but added that “the unpredictability of the situation” was the primary cause of the confusion. The board cancelled classes to protect student safety when the one-day protest was announced, but the provincial government challenged the ETFO’s plans and took the matter to the OLRB. Because the board didn’t know what the OLRB would decide or when it would arrive at its decision, the order to cancel classes remained. “We also didn’t know how the ETFO would react” if the OLRB (as it did) ruled their planned walkout to be illegal, Penman said.
She also noted that school boards were encouraged by the Ministry of Education to open their schools on Friday. Only eight of 31 boards across the province chose to have their elementary schools remain closed, she said.
At Guy Brown Elementary School, attendance on Friday was about 160 compared to the usual 537. Attendance also dipped at Dr. John Seaton School to 76 compared to its enrolment of 243 and at Balaclava Elementary School, where 195 of its 376 students assembled.
Overall, attendance across the board’s jurisdiction was down 60 per cent, with about 13,681 students attending class out of the 34,203 students who are enrolled at HWDSB’s 96 public elementary schools.
Students who couldn’t make it to school on Friday won’t be marked as absent, Penman said.
In a prepared statement issued Friday, ETFO president Sam Hammond said, “We respect the OLRB’s decision and will comply fully with the ruling. We did not believe this to be an illegal strike based on past political protests directed at the government.”
Ontario’s elementary and secondary public school teachers remain angry over the provincial government’s imposition of teachers’ contracts on Jan. 3, freezing their pay for two years, cutting sick benefits and banning strikes for the next two years.
A one-day political protest planned by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) for Jan. 16 was also cancelled in light of last week’s OLRB decision.
However, members of both teachers’ unions were scheduled to hold an after-hours protest the afternoon of Jan. 16 outside Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale MPP Ted McMeekin’s office, again in protest of the government’s actions under Bill 115.