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BILL 74 MAKES ONTARIO SCHOOL STRIKES NEARLY CERTAIN
By Liz Rowley
(This article is from the June 1-15/2000 issue of People's Voice. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
TORONTO - Two education bills being fast-tracked through the Ontario legislature will gut free collective bargaining, local autonomy, and democracy for teachers and School Boards.
In their negotiations for new collective agreements, the Teachers Federations are trying to maintain existing teacher preparation time, without increasing the current work load. Most Ontario teachers already work full days, and then mark tests and papers in the evening. Seventy percent also take on unpaid extra-curricular activities.
Tabled in mid-May, Bill 74 will unilaterally take over all aspects of collective bargaining, including the length of the school day, instructional time, preparation time, class size, and curricula. The legislation would force teachers to take on an additional class of students per year, as well as unpaid extra-curricular duties, or face disciplinary action, including firing. No other province in Canada has such legislation.
The Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation warns the legislation could violate forced labour laws. OSSTF President Earl Manners also says the changes hide a big funding cut that will show up when fewer teachers are doing far more work, with no time for individual attention to students. Extra help to individual students has been excluded from counting as teaching time by Education Minister Janet Ecker.
Ecker also says extra-curricular activities would be called "co-instructional time" rather than instructional time, apparently a semantic argument to avoid the sticky legal problem of forced labour.
The second piece of legislation, Bill 69, will make teacher testing and professional development mandatory. It will also force new teachers whose first language is not English or French to take a language proficiency test in addition to the basic certification exam. The Bill completely discounts the mandatory teacher evaluation procedures already in place in Boards across the province.
Liz Sandals, President of the Ontario Public School Boards Association, questioned Ecker's statements that "a formal role for parents in assessments of teachers" would be an improvement. What's to prevent a disgruntled parent from doing a job on a teacher they don't like, she has asked, proposing instead that a survey involving all parents be used as one component of teacher evaluation.
Voluntary professional development is currently paid for by individual teachers, at a cost of $700-$1,000 per course. The incentive is better teaching methods, combined with salary grid improvements. Bill 69 will make professional development mandatory, while leaving the costs with individual teachers.
Bill 74 is also a major step towards dismantling Ontario's 72 locally elected School Boards, which are responsible for the delivery of quality education, subject to general province-wide minimum standards. Now, School Boards are to be placed in a state of permanent legislated trusteeship.
The Bill gives the government arbitrary powers to remove locally-elected School Boards and individual Trustees for any reason, to fine Trustees up to $5,000, and to ban them for holding public office for up to five years.
The legislation is clearly aimed to stop School Boards from responding to public opposition to the provincial underfunding formula, and to the resulting dismantling of public education.
Windsor is the test case. In March the Greater Essex School Board (which encompasses Windsor) passed a motion which said that it would not implement cuts resulting from the inadequate provincial funding model. Clearly implicit was a decision to run a deficit to maintain programs, teaching and support staff, class size, and minimum levels of education quality.
A solidarity motion was passed by the Haliburton Board shortly after, and in April the Toronto District School Board passed a similar, though weaker motion. Unlike in Windsor, the Toronto Board was able to balance its budget this year because of mitigation and other additional provincial funds, though it is expected to hit the under-funding reef next year.
For the Harris government, this was a declaration of war. Ecker immediately sent in an audit team, and reminded the media that the consequences of "financial mismanagement."
"The rebellion has to be put down," she said, before deficit budgets are submitted.
In early May, the provincial Inspectors announced that cuts could be made that would balance the Greater Essex budget, and Ecker ordered the Board to rescind its March motion.
Board Chair Tom Kilpatrick said the cuts would reduce teaching and support staff, cut programs including special education and French immersion in a heavily Francophone community, and could shorten the length of the school year.
"The Board will have to make a difficult decision," said Kilpatrick. "Will they abide by the law or will they break the law? They would strongly disagree with the remark that we can deliver the same type of quality educational service if an additional $5 million is cut from our budget. Teachers and support staff will be cut back."
If Bill 74 passes, such cutbacks will be enshrined in law and applicable to all 72 boards. OPSBA President Sandals calls the legislation a threat to local autonomy and democracy. Similarly, the Toronto Board says Bill 74 is a threat to public democratic control of education.
Toronto Trustees Elizabeth Hill, Irene Atkinson and others say they will not accept trusteeship. Instead, they will mobilize public opinion against the legislation and go down fighting, if that's what it takes.
This fall's civic elections, Hill says, must be a time to mobilize to "knock off every privatizer, every corporate frontman or woman, every Harris sympathizer in every Board in the province." She calls for "a united front of School Boards, Trustees, parents, students, and the public committed to refuse the cuts."
Provincial Liberals, NDP, and the Communist Party have all opposed the legislation, and the privatization agenda behind it.
The three large Teacher Federations, support staff unions, CUPE, and some smaller unions, are in negotiations this summer. Their contracts all expire August 31, as a result of the 1997 forced amalgamation of Boards and bargaining units.
Sustained efforts by the Federations to negotiate agreements without sanctions, have been rendered useless by Bills 74 and 69. It appears the government is itching for a fight: to remove the last right of unions in the education sector to strike? To eliminate School Boards in Ontario altogether? Both?
The next few weeks will show. Whatever develops, teachers will in good company, since a major attack on labour standards has been announced for the fall session of the Legislature. It seems that all the right conditions are emerging for a major counter-offensive by labour in Canada's largest province.
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