Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce wants to give school kids across the province something they haven’t had in a long time — a normal school year. Consider this: The kids who started Grade 9 in 2019 have never had a full year of high school without COVID disruptions and after this year, they graduate.
“Our first priority is to make sure students are back in class on time with the full learning experience, and that includes extracurricular activities like band sports, field trips, and grad ceremonies,” Lecce said.
“We have the tools in place to support a safe and enriching learning experience for the coming school year.”
Lecce pointed to the ongoing accessibility of rapid tests and the placement of more than 100,000 HEPA filters in Ontario schools — “more in this one province than there are all provinces combined” — as proof they take student safety seriously.
Their overall plan is focused on five key goals. Getting kids back in classrooms in September with the school experience. New tutoring supports to fill gaps in learning from more than two years of interruption. Preparing students for the jobs of tomorrow with an emphasis on coding, science, technology and math plus building new schools and adding mental health supports for students.
Lecce’s words as he presented this plan were both a reassurance to students and parents that the Ford government will do everything they can to make this school year a normal one and a challenge to education unions. The province is in the middle of negotiations with the province’s four teachers unions plus CUPE which represents clerical staff, educational assistants and others.
He’s telling parents that he wants a normal school year and daring unions to explain why what shouldn’t happen.
So far, talks with most unions appear to be going well, though the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario is now telling the government they can’t possibly meet before the end of August — just before school starts. The government wants a seamless start to what they are hoping will be the first normal school year in the last four years and that the unions will play nice.
Their communications plan around all of this, tell students and parents that they want things to go back to normal and dare the teachers to say they won’t play ball. Some unions have already pointed out that extra-curricular activities are voluntary for students, that’s fine, maybe some clubs or sports won’t happen but as long as there aren’t strikes, I think most can struggle through.
Interestingly, the government included a note on how much teachers make in their Plan to Catch Up.
“Ontario teachers earn on average approximately $94,000 and when compared to other provinces, they have the highest salary for teachers at the top of the grid at $100,925,” the plan states bluntly near the end.
I can tell you from experience that teachers don’t like their publicly funded salaries being discussed in public. They want you to think that they are hard done by, paid little like teachers in many American states rather than among the best paid workers in the province.
After three years of constant interruption from the pandemic, we have to hope for a normal return to school in September. The students deserve that at the least.
Whether they get that will be up to the unions looking to fight the government at a time when public patience is likely already beyond paper thin.
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