Thursday June 25, 2015

June 24, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 25, 2015

Ontario teachers gearing up for fall job action

Ontario’s teacher unions say work-to-rule, followed by one-day or rotating strikes, will happen this fall if no collective agreements are worked out between now and the start of school.

Leaders of the four teacher unions — representing public elementary and secondary teachers, Catholic and French — met Thursday night in downtown Toronto to map out possible co-ordinated job action, as all are expected to be in strike position by September.

James Ryan, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, said that while final details have to be worked out with his union executive, a work-to-rule is likely to start off any job action and escalate from there.

He also warned there’s not a lot of time to reach deals because bargaining will be slow come summer.

“Bargaining all summer is highly unlikely,” he said, citing already booked vacations for staff on all sides at the bargaining table. “Could we be negotiating part of the summer? Yes. The entire summer? No.”

That’s because “there’s a dead time in the summer that probably stretches from about mid-July to mid-August — that’s when the education world goes dead for about a month.

“But we are committed to negotiate for the rest of June, and if we were close to an agreement, we certainly would be willing to roll up our sleeves in early July.”

But without intervention from Education Minister Liz Sandals — who has said negotiations could stretch into the summer — Ryan said he has little hope of either the government or school boards removing current proposals off the table.

Under new legislation, the unions, school boards and government negotiate costly items such as class size and salary, leaving union locals and individual school boards to hammer out items such as teacher performance reviews or job transfers.

No deals have been signed anywhere in the province. The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation recently took three boards out on strike, only to have the strikes ruled illegal because they were over central items — namely class size.

Ryan said the union heads have been meeting regularly during the past year, to discuss any progress with the new bargaining process and any possible job actions.

He said issues like class sizes, use of prep time and hiring regulations are common to all. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Wednesday May 6, 2015

May 5, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 6, 2015

Ontario elementary teachers plan job action Monday

Ontario’s 73,000 public elementary teachers will begin job action on Monday, when they are in a legal strike position.

While a strike is not anticipated — local union districts have been given details about a work-to-rule — it remains one of the options available, says Sam Hammond, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.

In a statement released Tuesday morning, ETFO said its members would be taking unspecified “central strike action” in 32 school boards across the province Monday.

According to an ETFO bulletin obtained by the Star, titled “Strike Protocol: Work-to-Rule — Phase 1,” and sent out to its Toronto members late Monday night, teachers will not take part in any EQAO (standardized testing), write report cards, fill in for absent principals or “conduct any reading, writing or mathematics assessments other than those that the teacher deems necessary to report on student progress.”

Hammond has told the Star that the recent offer on the table from the government and the school boards’ association was “offensive” and contained concessions the union would not consider.

He said if the concessions remained, the union would be “looking at all the options.”

“We are hoping on, or prior to, May 10 that we get substantial movement at the table and we won’t have to move in a direction nobody wants to move in,” he has previously said.

While talks have continued with the help of a mediator, they recently broke off. A union spokesperson said Monday that “ETFO is eagerly awaiting a call from the government that it, and the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, are ready to engage in meaningful and substantive bargaining.”

ETFO is the country’s largest teacher union. A strike or job action would affect more than 817,000 elementary school students across the province. (Source: Toronto Star)

Tuesday May 5, 2015

May 4, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday May 5, 2015

Thousands of parents keep kids home from school in sex-ed protest

Parents of thousands of elementary students across Toronto kept their children out of class Monday to protest the sex-ed portion of Ontario’s new health curriculum.

The hardest hit school was Thorncliffe Park Public School, where only about 130 children showed up for class out of the usual 1,350 — or roughly 10 per cent. At nearby Gateway Public School, some 400 students were away, nearly half the usual enrolment. At Valley Park Middle School, some 590 students were absent out of the total 950.

At Fraser Mustard, an all-kindergarten school in Thorncliffe Park, only 90 of 650 students turned up. The sex-ed curriculum doesn’t actually kick in until Grade 1.

“In Grade 1 they should be learning about the ABCs, not sex,” said Thorncliffe Park parent Lubna Awah, who kept her kindergarten son home.

“Boys are boys and girls are girls — why should they learn about a third (gender) in Grade 1?” asked Awah, who said she believes children will be encouraged to question their gender identity as early as Grade 1.

Awah said she learned much of what she is concerned about regarding the new curriculum earlier this spring on a flyer circulated by what she called a “Chinese Christian group,” because she said the school did not educate parents.

The new curriculum, endorsed by a coalition of doctors, educators, mental health experts as long overdue in an age of sexting, easy access to online pornography and a falling age of puberty, includes references to anal and oral sex in the context of warning students these alternatives to intercourse can also be risky because they can spread sexually transmitted disease, yet many protesters said they believe the curriculum encourages such behaviour. Critics have seized onto this, as well as possible explanations about masturbation that teachers would offer if asked by students, as encouraging all these behaviours — something educators have insisted in not the case. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Tuesday September 3, 2013

September 3, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Tuesday August 3, 2013

Of Apps and Declining EQAO Scores

A digital revolution is on the rise at Hamilton’s inner city schools.

Starting this September, the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board will be distributing hundreds of iPads to Grade 4, 5 and 6 classrooms at seven schools — Adelaide Hoodless, A.M. Cunningham, Cathy Wever, Dr. Davey, Prince of Wales, Memorial and Queen Victoria.

The program will then expand until 2016, when every student in Grades 4 through 12 at those schools, as well as the new central Hamilton high school, will be outfitted with their own, personal tablets.

“We know that many of the kids in these schools from a socioeconomic point of view face significance challenges,” said education director John Malloy. “We want them to become the leaders of the entire board.” (Source: The Hamilton Spectator)

Ontario’s education minister says elementary school teachers may need more professional development, after test results show that their students are struggling with math skills.

The Education Quality and Accountability Office released results on Wednesday that suggest almost one in five Grade 6 students do not meet the provincial math standard, even after meeting the standard in Grade 3.

Minister Liz Sandals said many elementary teachers come from an arts background and aren’t as comfortable teaching math compared to reading or writing. (Source: The London Free Press)

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This cartoon was featured in a gallery of Editorial Cartoons in the Yahoo! Canada News for September 2013. Here it is on Yahoo News’ Facebook page.

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Thursday November 15, 2012

November 15, 2012 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday November 15, 2012

Fallen acorns a threat to kids with allergies

A York Region mother is fighting to have oak trees removed near her child’s school, fearing that acorns could pose a deadly threat to students with severe allergies.

Donna Giustizia said the young trees on property owned by the City of Vaughan next to St. Stephen Catholic Elementary School are littering the area with acorns. The school, meanwhile, is nut-free to protect students with potentially life-threatening anaphylactic allergies.

“A false sense of security is putting a sign on the door that says nut-free and there’s nuts all over the place,” said Giustizia, who has two teenage children with anaphylactic food allergies, one of whom attends St. Stephen.

“I’m not a crazy mom, I’m not asking for anything that’s not already there.”

Giustizia appeared before Vaughan’s committee of the whole last week to plead for the removal of the trees.

Several councillors at the meeting questioned the precedent that removing the trees might set. Thornhill/Concord Councillor Sandra Yeung Racco wondered whether removing these trees would mean having to remove oak trees from other public properties where children with allergies might be exposed.

Councillors referred the matter to staff to prepare a report on the issue. City communications manager Ted Hallas said in an email that staff wouldn’t release details of the report before it is presented to councillors. (Source: Toronto Star)