Catholic teachers face threat of lockout
Thousands of Catholic elementary school students will be locked out of their classrooms along with their teachers, if a new deal can’t be reached between the school board and teachers union in the next few weeks.
The Niagara Catholic District School Board notified its about 800 elementary school teachers, represented by the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA) Niagara Elementary Unit, that they will be locked out on March 20, due to stalled negotiations and on-going work-to-rule sanctions, all but eliminating extracurricular activities for the board’s 14,700 elementary students.
“We’ve been at this for a long time, negotiating with the elementary unit for about a year since February,” said board chair Rev. Paul MacNeil.
Although students still receive their core education under the work-to-rule that has been in place since September, MacNeil said “the hard part, though, is it does have kind of an accumulative effect.”
“It goes to show you how important those extracurricular activities are,” he said, in an interview, Friday. “It’s about the whole child, every aspect of the child and really working with them. I think that’s what we’re placing a value on as well.”
The union, however, said the lockout notice “shows a lack of respect for students and teachers.”
Although a media release issued by the board stated that the threat of a lock out was “in the students’ best interests,” the union responded with its own media release issued a few hours later, saying: “delivering curriculum in the classroom is what is best for students.”
MacNeil said issues arose during negotiations that have yet to be resolved, although he would not specify what those issues are.
“To speak frankly, we can’t go on like this,” he said.
And with no resolution in sight, he said school board trustees voted unanimously in favour of the lockout.
“Agonizingly with a lot of regret, we said maybe this is a step that we have got to take,” he said.
“We are very concerned with providing the best possible education that we can, and this is all about the kids. I think the concern is that as the sanctions carried on, the accumulative effect is interfering with that. So we thought let’s see if we can do something to get this moving.”
But with more than two weeks remaining before the lock out deadline, MacNeil remains hopeful that it can be avoided.
“A lot can happen between now and then,” he said.
Negotiations are scheduled to resume on Monday, “and we’re prepared to work as hard as we can to stay at that table and try to work it out,” MacNeil added.
He said the board hopes that “the change of gears here is really going to help with the negotiating process.”
“We hope and pray for a quick solution, but the reality is we’ve been at this for a long time.”
The union, too, was optimistic in its media release, saying it is “trying to work toward a resolution,” in preparation for Monday’s meeting.
If, however, negotiations fail with only three months remaining before the end of the school year, it could have a significant impact on the students depending on how long it takes before classes resume.
“I’m not going to dare speculate on that,” McNeil said. “But yes, that would certainly be terrible.
Meanwhile, the union says the $200,000 that the Board expects to spend on legal fees for negotiations is “a waste of taxpayers’ money, considering that we are negotiating non-monetary items.”
That money, the union added, “would be better spent in a variety of ways including supplies for students, textbooks, technology and supporting the needs of our students, including the students with special needs.”