SPORTS AND CLUBS HIT HARD
By Kirk Winter
In a move that has caught many parents and students by surprise, the Trillium Lakelands District School Board has cancelled all extra-curricular activities at the seven high schools for which the board has administrative responsibility. The Board claims the cancellation is based on their inability to cover teachers’ classes when they are out of the schools with teams or clubs. Senior staff claim the supply list is fully taxed and they are unable to hire more supply teachers because of the current agreement with the high school teachers union, OSSTF. Parents who attended the January 28 meeting were outraged by the decision and posted their frustrations to a number of social media platforms.
ETFO, the union representing the Board’s elementary teachers, has already discontinued offering extra-curricular programming at their job sites. OSSTF has not gone down that road yet in the arsenal of sanctions they possess.
A press release from OSSTF District 15 shared the following:
OSSTF is engaged in a provincial job action. None of OSSTF’s sanctions target extra-curricular activities or field trips. These sanctions apply equally to all school boards in Ontario.
The number of occasional teachers on the TLDSB supply list is limited in the collective agreement between OSSTF and TLDSB in order to ensure that there is both adequate availability of occasional teachers and adequate work for those teachers. With respect to the collective agreement, the school board is in a position to immediately hire eight occasional teachers should they choose.
At this time OSSTF members remain committed to voluntary extra-curricular activities and field trips as scheduled, including drama and music festivals and regional and provincial athletic championships.
In a day of dueling press releases, the Trillium Lakelands School Board explained their decision to be the first board in Ontario to cancel extra-curriculars. The Board shared that OSSTF is no longer covering the classroom absences of other teachers during their prep periods. A refusal by OSSTF members to do “on-calls” has caused all available occasional teachers to be held back to cover only the absences of high school staff who are not in attendance because of illness. The Board also suggests that “secondary occasional teachers are added to the supply list on a continual basis where possible. However, due to contractual obligation to OSSTF, TLDSB is limited to the number of teachers permitted to be added to the supply list.”
There appears to be a misunderstanding between the two parties about the size of the supply list, with the union claiming that eight more staff could be hired immediately and the board claiming the union is preventing further occasional teacher hirings. Eight additional secondary teachers hired to the supply list could certainly help alleviate some of the shortage of teachers the Board claims currently exists, giving them more staff to cover all kinds of teacher absences.
Parent reaction on social media was swift and one-sided, particularly from those who attended the meeting in person. Comments included:
“Why can other boards manage the occasional teacher situation and this one can’t?”
“This is a manufactured crisis. Someone doesn’t want the system to work.”
“There are hundreds of teachers looking for work locally. This problem could be solved by Monday if someone at the board office had a plan.”
“Teachers want to coach and run clubs…..why are we preventing them from doing that?”
“Extra-curriculars keep kids in school and help manage anxiety and depression. Why is the board shutting them down when their employees want to provide them?”
Parents were particularly critical of some senior Board staff, who they felt “refused to answer their questions”, and “treated them with platitudes and teacher speak.”
The only thing that is now for sure is that secondary school students in the Trillium Lakelands District School Board will be the only secondary students in Ontario with no extra-curricular activities effective immediately.