Provincewide teacher job action starts on Monday

Teachers across the province are pulling out of extracurricular activities on Monday, and some schools divisions will have additional noon-hour su‐ pervision sanctions.

On Friday, the Saskatchewan Teachers' Fed‐ eration (STF) released notice of their latest round of job action. It stated teachers are withdrawing from extracur‐ ricular activities from March 25-28.

On Monday, additional job action will impact noon-hour supervision in these school divisions:

The sanctions come as a result of the ongoing contract dispute between the provin‐ cial government and the union, largely over the issue or class size and complexity.

The government has re‐ mained resolute in class size and complexity being the re‐ sponsibility of local school boards, and the STF has said it will return to the table if the government agrees to negotiate on these issues or go to binding arbitration on them.

On Friday, Minister of Ed‐ ucation Jeremy Cockrill indi‐ cated in an email statement that work is being done to "find a pathway forward" with the STF.

"I will have more to say next week on how we are working to ensure that stu‐ dents get the opportunities they so deserve, including graduation," said Cockrill in the email.

Cockrill also stated previ‐ ously that the government has moved on many of the items the STF has asked for, and are "prepared to create an accountability framework connected to the historic multi-year funding agreement."

The STF has previously said the funding announced is not guaranteed and the government could change its mind about it in the future.

Samantha Becotte, presi‐ dent of the federation, said she learned about the province's potential frame‐ work proposal while speak‐ ing with media on Thursday.

The STF said in their re‐ lease that about 400,000 emails and phone calls have been sent to MLAs and school board trustees in sup‐ port of the teachers' push to bargain on class size and complexity.