It's another long weekend for elementary and high school students across Ontario as educators in all four of the major teachers' unions hit the picket line on Friday.
The joint one-day walkout by the nearly 200,000 members of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF), the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO), the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association (OECTA), and the Association des enseignantes et des enseignants franco-ontariens (AEFO) is the first of its kind since 1997. It will keep an estimated two million students across 72 school boards out of class for the day.
In addition to picketing outside of their respective schools, teachers plan to hold a massive rally outside of the provincial legislature. The presidents of the four major teachers' unions are scheduled to speak outside of Queen's Park around 9:30 a.m.
The unions have said they are protesting the Ford government's cuts to publicly funded education.
“Educators in every school board will not stay silent as the Ford government proceeds to decimate our publicly funded education system,” ETFO President Sam Hammond said in a statement last week announcing the provincewide job strike. “Our unions and members helped build Ontario’s world-class education system. By not seriously addressing the issues critical to students and student learning, the Ford government has made a sham of contract talks over the last seven months.”
Education Minister Stephen Lecce has previously insisted the unions are holding out for a wage increase above the 1 per cent annual cap for public sector workers. But the teachers argue it is about class sizes, investments in special education, mandatory e-learning, and addressing violence in the classroom.
Bargaining between the province and two of the teachers' unions - OECTA and AEFO - resumed on Wednesday. It is the first time negotiations with the English Catholic teachers have taken place since breaking down in early January. The French teachers' union has been engaged in sporadic talks for several months.
Negotiations with public elementary teachers broke off at the end of January following just three days of talks with the province.