Striking teachers, hungry kids

The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) enduringly insists its ongoing work-to-rule campaign is really for the sake of the children. Yes, it is true that for the moment, the children are the ones having to suffer cancelled field trips, and frozen classroom bulletins, and halted fundraisers, and a dearth of comments on their report cards.

And yes, students (and parents) will be further burdened by rotating one-day strikes later this month if the union follows through on “Phase 4” of its plan. But how else can teachers make their plight of insufficient prep time known except by refusing to take their class to the science museum? What is the union supposed to do: bargain with its employer without severely inconveniencing parents and students? Bah! In that case, why bother bargaining at all?

For the moment, the ETFO remains in “Phase 3” of its program, which is running concurrently with a similar campaign by school support workers, represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). Both unions have instructed their members to stop handling money for the duration of the campaign, meaning that as of last week there has been no one to collect for fundraisers, food days or school breakfast programs.

There are currently hundreds of breakfast clubs operating at schools all across the province, providing nutritious meals to students who might otherwise not get a good breakfast at home. Those programs are typically financed through a combination of government grants, corporate donations and private donations. In Peel Region, for example, parents are usually asked to give a 25-cent donation. But with no one to gather the funds and supervise the breakfasts, the Peel school board has been forced to suspend the program. Other boards may follow.

Education Minister Liz Sandals seized the opportunity Wednesday to slam the unions for what she called an “appalling” decision. “There’s just no world in which you can say we’re not disrupting student learning if you disrupt the breakfast club, because we know there’s scads of research that shows that kids can’t learn on empty stomachs,” she said. “That’s why we have breakfast programs. If kids get proper nutrition, they learn better, so to disrupt the breakfast program is just unforgivable.”

Certainly there’s political strategy at play in Sandals’ remarks here, but she isn’t wrong. Countless studies have indeed shown students perform better when they eat a proper breakfast; teachers would know that better than anyone. By withdrawing their services, they leave it to overworked principals to pick up the slack, which many simply won’t be able to do.

The unions might still consider their actions justified, but they cannot reasonably claim that these efforts are not harming students. Quite simply, they are putting their own interests ahead of the welfare of hungry children. Spare us, then, the self-serving rhetoric about how all this disruption and withdrawal of services will be to the eventual advantage of Ontario students. For a child without breakfast, “eventually” is a long way off.