March break can wait; coronavirus, not so much
In mid-pandemic, our government can’t catch a break over March break.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Damned if you delay, damned every which way — even when you weigh the arguments.
As Education Minister Stephen Lecce pondered whether to cancel the annual one-week holiday, teachers lobbied furiously for the status quo. Keep it as scheduled, they argued — for the students, for the parents and, as an afterthought of course, for themselves.
Lecce didn’t listen to the labour leaders. Abandoning the binary options of cancelling or maintaining the annual holiday, he surprised the province with a third option, heeding the advice of Ontario’s chief medical officer of health to postpone the holiday until mid-April instead.
Opposition and union reaction to the rescheduling (no, not abandoning) of March break has blended apoplexy with hypocrisy.
Remember our last March break, when Premier Doug Ford initially urged people to travel until he had second thoughts — opening the door to COVID-19 before he could shut it again? He never quite lived it down, but now that his government is learning from its mistake — by reducing the risk of unrestricted travel and socializing this time around — the Tories remain a fresh target for teachers.
Had the government cancelled March break outright, they’d have been crucified by the unions. Had they left it intact, they’d have been lambasted by other critics for inertia.
Labour loves loathing Lecce. An agglomeration of five unions representing school teachers and support staff — ETFO (elementary teachers), OSSTF (secondary schools), OECTA (Catholic boards), AEFO (francophones) and CUPE (mostly support staff ) — issued thundering news releases Thursday denouncing the minister’s allegedly rightwing wrongdoing.
On the eve of a four-day break from classes this very holiday weekend — Monday being Family Day, Friday being a professional activity day — the labour alliance took its stand: They can’t wait for more time off.
The education unions “strongly oppose … the government’s decision to postpone March break (which) does not take into consideration the mental health and well-being of those involved.”
Toronto-area students are only now heading back into classrooms after being trapped at home with stressed-out parents since December. Kids don’t need a break from class as much as they need a break from home.
Why wouldn’t we give them more uninterrupted time in school? After so much time online — and apart — why not make the most of declining COVID-19 transmission while we still can, before foreign variants trigger a dreaded third wave that could wreak havoc with the rest of the school year?
“Their decision to postpone, despite unanimous opposition from unions … is another example of this government ignoring experts and making decisions that are reckless and baseless,” the labour statement declared.
Reckless and baseless? That’s a tone-deaf tirade, berating Lecce for not heeding them while hearing out other medical experts.
Teachers are burned out and bummed out, but so are nurses in long-term care and intensive care, who won’t get a week off either this month or next. Teachers feel overworked, but no one is more overwrought than the New Democratic Party opposition.
“Parents with kids doing at-home learning are desperate to take a breath from their superhuman juggling of work, school and other responsibilities,” NDP Leader Andrea Horwath argued after the announcement. “This delay is more upheaval in the lives of families that haven’t had the structure, support and predictability they need.”
Sorry, pandemics aren’t predictable — COVID-19 waves come and go on their own schedule, not the annual holiday calendar. Has Horwath not considered all those working parents struggling to cope with their kids studying from home who will surely benefit from the breathing space of having them back in class a little while longer, without scrambling to find more child care so soon?
Despite the overheated rhetoric of recent days, Ontario’s teachers have stepped up to the plate in the pandemic. Unlike the discouraging confrontations and abdications in New York, Chicago and San Francisco — where unions have threatened to walk off the job when asked to do their jobs in class — our teachers have heeded the call of duty without hesitation, even if, as in other front-line occupations, it wasn’t the peril they signed up for.
Like students and parents, teachers are indeed overstretched and overstressed, doing double duty online and in class. But as vital as online learning has been in salvaging a school year that would otherwise be lost, there is no substitute for in-class education — pedagogically, psychologically, socially.
There has been an abundance of blunders over the past year by governments at all levels — from failing to secure airports that were vectors for foreign variants, to skimping on sick pay. There are still questions about how Lecce will enforce this public health necessity with private schools (no excuses here); and there is a moral obligation on Ford to put classrooms before commerce in lifting the lockdown (no margin of error there).
But on those relatively rare occasions when government gets it right, it is simply wrong to sap our collective will by playing the victim and whipping up contrived grievances. With all that virulence over the virus, we need a vaccine for coronavirus carping if we are to survive beyond April break.
In mid-pandemic, union solidarity (I’m a believer) and social solidarity (also a believer) need not be mutually exclusive. On this Family Day long weekend, give us a break. Twitter: @reggcohn