Today elementary school teachers ramped up their contract fight with the provincial government closing Central Avenue School and Esten Park Public School with a further walkout planned for tomorrow in Elliot Lake.
Teacher Kim (who declined to give her last name) said the major stumbling block in negotiations is the province’s demand for larger classes and cutbacks in staff to take care of students with learning disabilities.
“Pay is not what we are out here for we’re here for the kids,” the Esten Park teacher for the past two years told Elliot Lake Today while she was picket captain on the picket line at Central where she taught for 16 years.
She is a member of the Algoma Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO). The Algoma ETFO.
“Removing EAs (Education Assistants) … we have a spectrum of children in each classroom (and) when you’re stretched so thin… right now with the class sizes the way they are now it’s still hard to make that one on one contact with that child each day and that is so vital to their education,” she said. “They need to know that first they are cared for, authentically cared for, and if you don’t even have time to go and talked to them, not even about academics, (but about) how are things going, how can I make things better for you today, addressing their needs. Without that one on one you’re losing your kids.”
Kim said the walkouts and dispute with the provincial government is not about wages which she believes is the eighth contract demand being made by the ETFO in negotiations with the Ford government.
Lee Mason, president of the Algoma ETFO and its 550 full-time and occasional teachers, said special education funding is an essential issue with his members. The province has already cut some $89 million promised by the previous provincial government for special education.
“It was there and when this government came in they just stripped it away,” he said while on the picket line at Central. “That funding helped with the autism classrooms across the province. Locally we had a couple of extra teachers that were hired for specialized classrooms to get some of the students that need the help and resources for teachers to travel around.”
Mason said violence is the classroom, “is escalating,” and of concern to educators and parents where students and teachers are being injured.
The union is looking for extra funding to deal with violence.
He said talks recently fell apart when issues raised by the union that were on the table were removed by the province.
“We don’t want to be on the picket line,” he added. “We’re hoping to get back and get something that will work for the teachers and the students in the classrooms. What’s happening to education is not viable in the long run.”
“The problem is building and your taking money away from the solution, it’s not going to fix itself.”