Strike threatens year for Peel students

Over 67,000 high school students in Ontario are out of class as teachers’ strikes spread and, with summer in sight, students are starting to worry about the fate of their school year as worst-case scenarios are discussed in private.

Peel public high school teachers Monday joined thousands of striking teachers in Durham and Sudbury.

Public elementary teachers across Ontario will be in a strike position May 10, and Catholic teachers in June. But it’s students in Durham, where teachers started picketing April 20 and kids are now in the third week without classes, who have taken the brunt so far.

For Grade 12 students, it’s worse. They are worried about credits and being ready to start college or university in the fall.

And then there are the less tangible moments of the final few months of high school, filled with farewell concerts, day trips and proms.

“One of the main reasons I enjoy school is due to the extracurriculars,” said Dimitri Seemungal, a Grade 12 student from Durham, in an email. He’s in choirs and other performing arts and the end-year music night is currently postponed. “My chances of singing a solo for the final year are put in jeopardy!

“The strike possibly puts in jeopardy (an) English credit, which is a pre-requisite for my university program,” he added.

Michael Barrett, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, which represents boards at the central table, and chair of the Durham District School Board, understands Seemungal’s fears. He’s a dad to a grade 12 student whose teachers are on strike.

Barrett said the board is trying to make sure proms and other end-of-school events happen, but the missed days might have to be made up.

“The last thing we want to do is make our students come back over the summer,” Barrett said. Though it would be tough, and might require provincial legislation, if the strike drags on weeks longer, it could be necessary.

But students have plans: Seemungal, for example, is set to study in Quebec over the summer before heading to post-secondary school this fall.

Education Minister Liz Sandals assured parents and students Monday that all preliminary grades were submitted to colleges and universities before the strikes began, so applications for those programs are safe.

“The colleges and universities always use interim marks as the basis of their initial offers of admission … students (in the affected boards) are being treated like other students all across the province,” Sandals told reporters Monday.

Education Ministry officials are meeting with Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities officials to ensure the process remains so smooth if teens are locked out much longer, Barrett said.

He added that it would be “unprecedented” to lose a school term or semester but, “if nothing changes” over the next few weeks, those discussions as to when, exactly, the semester becomes a wash could intensify.

Both he and Steve Barrowclough, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) local on strike in Durham, say talks have yet to resume since the strike began.

Paul Elliott, president of OSSTF, said that’s been the case in many boards, including those poised to join other high schools at the picket lines in Waterloo, Halton, Ottawa and Thunder Bay.

As for the fate of the school year, Elliott said he hopes talks can resume but if that process needs to happen, there’s legislation to govern it already.

“We won’t be able to make those decisions, that’s up to the government and school boards to make those decisions: how far along does it (have to get) before things have to be made up?”