Provincial Agreement Now Supports Teacher Professionalism (From the General Secretary)

The provincial agreement that ETFO agreed to on February 12 contains important provisions that enhance our members’ professionalism. Unlike agreements signed by other federations, this provincial agreement does not contain the preamble that ties collective agreement provisions to student success and increasing confidence  in  public education. ETFO members are committed to student success and to making our schools the best they can be. To attempt to enshrine these principles in collective agreements insults their professionalism and would have weakened their collective agreements.

Further, the agreement recognizes that teachers as professionals have a right to control their own preparation time. All of the preparation time negotiated is within the teacher’s control. The December proposal of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association (OPSBA) would have given principals the right to control any extra minutes negotiated. Members at local meetings underlined that this was offensive to them. They recognized that it was about principals exerting control over teachers.

The ETFO agreement also contains language that creates additional teacher jobs as a result of increasing preparation  time. Boards cannot consider professional activity days as instructional days for the purpose of calculating preparation time. When a teacher misses preparation time as a result of being asked to fill in for an absent colleague, that time must be paid  back.  Members also receive two professional activity days (by 2010–2011) for assessment and completing report cards.

Supervision time was another contentious area in negotiations. Previous versions of the agreement, accepted by some federations, contained language that would have forced teachers to be in their classrooms supervising students an additional 20 minutes a day. That didn’t happen. For ETFO members, the current requirements under Regulation 298 remain in force: teachers must be in the school for 15 minutes before class in the morning and five minutes before class in the afternoon, but how they use those minutes is up to them.

As well, in this new agreement, teachers’ supervision time is limited to a maximum of 80 minutes per week in every school in every board. This will greatly reduce supervision time for some of our members. The superior entitlements of those who now have less than 80 minutes supervision duty will continue.

Limits have also been set on staff meetings. The agreement stipulates an average of one staff meeting per month of no more than 75 minutes. Teachers are expected, not required, to attend.
The agreement provides boards with additional funding for professional development. It also makes possible potential improvements in maternity  and  parental  leave  benefits,  recognizes the importance of health and safety, and stipulates that  peer coaching is voluntary. If a teacher chooses to act as a peer coach or mentor, none of the information obtained during that process can be used to evaluate colleagues. Average class sizes in grades 4 to 8 will be somewhat reduced over the life of the agreement.

The terms of the provincial agreement will now have to be negotiated into every local collective agreement. Local issues remain negotiable as well, but it is intended that collective agreements will be reached by March 31, 2009. The degree to which your board responds in a positive way to local issues will be a good measure of the level of respect it holds for elementary teachers.

For many decades, elementary teachers have been treated with less respect than their secondary counterparts, perhaps because they are largely women, perhaps because they have chosen to teach young children. It was clear that the principals, superintendents, and directors who were representing OPSBA at the provincial discussion table talks were determined to roll back elementary  teachers’  rights  and  professionalism. As a result, public elementary teachers will end this contract with a salary that is 2 percent below that of every other teacher in Ontario. The principals, superintendents, directors, and trustees  who were represented on the OPSBA negotiating team responsible for no agreement being reached in December will experience no similar loss in compensation.