You’ve got his name wrong Doretta. As of this past week and thanks to a Superintendent with the Kitchener/Waterloo school board who feels the education system is the “co-parent” of students, it’s “Co-Daddy Dalton” (sounds like a rapper’s name but it works VERY well.)

Interesting times for sure, but for those of us who have been following things closely over the past years, we knew this day would come.

Interestingly also that over the last 40 years, each successive government has come to this same point.

Although among Premiers I’m pretty sure that Mike Harris was the only one who didn’t freeze wages or recommend Rae days.

This is where the McGuinty gov’t has taken rural Ontario re: education. Small/rural schools closed in favour of the “bigger is better” variety.

http://huron.bulletnewscanada.ca/2012/02/29/where-do-you-stand-on-school-closures-amalgamations/

Interesting numbers in the latest Star article.

“Broten wants the teachers to take a two-year wage freeze. That includes keeping their salaries and seniority frozen. On average, a teacher’s compensation increases 8.5 per cent each and every year, the minister said.”

“The government also wants to eliminate a generous sick leave provision that has left taxpayers with a $1.7 billion liability. Teachers are allowed 20 sick days a year. They can bank up to 200 sick days and upon retirement they can cash those days out.

“The fact of the matter is … this type of benefit is not in keeping with our fiscal reality,” she said.

Instead, the government wants to introduce a short-term sick leave plan that each year offers six sick days paid at 100 per cent salary and 24 weeks at 66.66 per cent salary.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1139113—teachers-must-take-pay-freeze-ontario-government-says?bn=1#article

Of course the union brass, is against the measures, as well as disputing the number 8.5 percent raise each and every year.

Most people would be happy with a 66.66 salary, while on sick leave. Most people who have the excess cash, would buy the necessary insurance to cover extended sick leave. Why does the teachers’ unions think they are so special, that they need to have the taxpayers cover the 1.7 billion liability for sick leave?

It’ll be interesting watching the unions actually trying to sell the retirement gratuity scam.  Paying folks tens of thousands of dollars for simply not taking far more sick days than the rest of the workforce leaves a bad taste.

Focussing public attention on a benefit even those who get it can’t defend will make for interesting discussion

Couple of notes:

Re:  Amalgamation - Huron County may be following its own lead.  Just north of Huron is the Bluewater Bd - by the end of this calendar year will will have 3 K-12 schools and a 4th is being built.

Re; Negotiations - this is the first time in my career that I have been asked for my personal e-mail address by the union - ‘in case of emergency’.

Hmm personal emails? best set up a gmail account for that.

Seriously, though I think things are in early days.  Both sides will see how far they can push things.
I mean, the unions won’t want to think the $10million spent on Working Families will be wasted in the end if
it comes to labor unrest and neither will the government

Wayne - The AMDSB definitely marches to it’s own drummer. How many smaller schools in Bluewater are closing to build the new ones? I did here that that was happening up there.

If the unions start ramping things up in my district, it will be the worst PR mistake in recent history.

The taxpaying public is in no mood for labour strife vis-a-vis the teacher unions.

Listening to a call-in talk show out of London this morning. This was the topic was the sick days teachers get and can bank. A couple of union workers who used to work at the now closed Caterpillar plant there, called to say that even among unions that sick-day deal the teachers have is crazy. One guy said that even among other unions, and in these times, the teachers’ contract is a bit over the top.

John,

Whether you think that the number of sick days is outrageous or not is not the point here.  Let’s say that you negotiate a a deal on a new car and the price you settle on is $20,000.  You drive the car off the lot and go to another dealer and find out that you could have bought exactly the same car from them for $15,000.  You can’t go back to the first dealer and negotiate a $5,000 reduction - the deal is already done.

The 200 days banked is merely the level needed to get the gratuity.  Most teachers have much more than that.  What most people fail to understand is that it is in the Board’s (and taxpayer’s) best interest to encourage teachers to bank as many as possible.  For every day a teacher is away, the public needs to pay both the teacher who is off sick and a supply teacher.  I have banked over 320 sick days in my career so far - the cost to the taxpayer if I had used those days instead of banking them? - $192,000.

I know at this point, logical, fiscal arguments don’t usually help, so let me make it more personal.  This year I had a bout of pneumonia and was away for quite sometime.  Would you, as a parent, really want me in the classroom/school infecting your child and possibly hundreds of others?  If I’m not there, what would you have done for your child?  Send them to the library? Gym?  How would it sound if you were told, “No math class today. my teacher was off sick.”?

Chuck,

Don’t think that this is a union, or even Board push on this issue.  School amalgamation has to do with declining enrollment and the wishes of the parents/public.

Let’s take an example like the Town of Walkerton.  In just the public board alone, the town had two elementary schools and a high school.  As declining enrollment began to hit the elementary schools over a decade ago, the board was eventually forced to amalgamate the two elementary into one.  Now, the kids are older and the declining enrollment problem has hit the high school.

I don’t know about the Avon-Maitland Board, but our board holds ARC (Accommodation Review Committee) meetings.  The public is encouraged to come out and voice their concerns.  One of the board’s options was to close all schools in Walkerton and bus the students to Hanover, which is only 8 km to the east.  That way there would be enough combined students to justify the schools.  Oddly enough, the public doesn’t like losing schools out of their communities.  So the only option left to our board was to have only one school in Walkerton that would be K-12.  Not a great solution (I don’t know if I want a 4 year old JK student hanging around with 18 year olds), but it took the concerns of the parents into account and showed that the Board actually does listen sometimes.

Keep in mind that workers typically take single digits in the way of sick time in the course of a year so teachers aren’t being asked to take extraordinary measures.  If, as we’re told,  the point is to encourage good attendance the numbers of sick days would have to be low enough to require good attendance.  As it is teachers can both book off as much as any other worker AND max out their gratuity..

On the issue of the gratuity being negotiated it is a leftover from decades in the past; things evolve. 

As mentionned the problem is that even teachers have a hard time making a good case for gratuities,
People are being paid tens of thousands of dollars for doing what most workers do as a routine part of the job.  At a time of real hardship for many workers that’s hard to sell.

Nothing wrong with K to 12 schools Wayne.

NL . 25 percent of schools are K to 12 and all located in rural areas. The K to 12 schools, also have outstanding scholars, winning prestigious scholarships on a regular basis. Also have higher achievement, the luxury of small class sizes of 15 or less, and all of the schools are under 250 students or less.

By the way elementary and high school students are kept in separate parts of the school building, with a few common areas. It works very well, less behaviour problems when the elementary and secondary programs are kept separate and distinct from each other. 

“School amalgamation has to do with declining enrollment and the wishes of the parents/public.”

If one wishes to see it that way. But big box schools plus bus transportation (the number of kms travelled) = big funding increases and   (+) or (-) in achievement.

As for parents having a say - Isn’t it rigged?

“Currently, schools across the SCDSB do not qualify as rural schools under the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) funding model.

The MOE defines rural schools as those which have a zero in their postal code, MOE spokesperson Gary Wheeler wrote in an email. Schools that are considered rural generate additional funding for the local school board.

Wheeler said since the McGuinty government came into power, the MOE has increased funding for rural boards by 30%.

“In 2010-11 alone, rural boards are projected to receive $109 million in new investments, bringing funding for rural boards to over $3.5 billion,” he wrote.

None of that funding finds its way to the SCDSB.”
http://www.orilliapacket.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2925436&archive=true

“Simcoe-Grey MPP Jim Wilson has tabled three questions in the Ontario Legislature for Minister of Education Laurel Broten regarding the closure of Duntroon Central Public School and rural school closures in general.”
http://www.simcoe.com/news/article/1267750—wilson-after-answers-for-rural-schools

On Jim’s Wilson web site, so far no update.

Actually, Wayne most boards, through their Capital Plans that are required by the province work toward that plan, and do all they can to massage that through the ARCs and process.

Much depends on the quality of school board, but the consensus around here is that the ARC process is a joke.

Regarding sick days—a young professional was telling me how great it was that her dad was a teacher, since he’d simply take a sick day to do things with her and her sister that mom (who worked in the private sector) could not take time off of work to do.  Glad it worked for their family, but teachers’ sick days cost taxpayers dearly.

As far as the argument that accumulated sick pay at retirement gives teachers incentive to stay home when sick, and not infect the school…  Hello?  Are these not adults we’re talking about?  Do they need incentive to do the right thing?

Public sector pensions; salaries; wages; benefits are unsustainable, and so unfortunately, now that times are tough, theyll have to be rolled back.

Quite honestly, I can’t understand why McGuinty spent so lavishly—exceeding tax revenue—on the psu.  As much as we don’t like it, the chickens always come home to roost

Nancy, 

That’s good to hear.  Maybe I just see too much of the way teenagers act.  However, if they can work, then that’s fine. 

As far as ‘rigging’, from what I have seen, our board would prefer to bus the kids to ‘big box’ schools, but the parents want to keep the schools in their town.  We are talking ‘little box’ schools here - 400-500 students in elementary and secondary combined.  These schools are replacing a high school that once held 1,000 students as well as two elementary schools that held 500 each.

Wayne, the research indicates schools of 250 or less are ideal for both the students and staff. When teachers really get to know their students, their strengths and weaknesses, and build relationships with the students.

I can see why, you might object to the all in one K to 12, when the student population is 500 or more. I happen to live in an area where the total count of K to 12 students is close to 500 students. Two communities with 4 kms between the two, and one has the elementary school of K to 7 and the other community has the high school of 8 to 12.

The all in one K to 12 schools are created when student population within a 20 km radius are 250 or less students, providing there is roads for the buses to travel. The more remote communities, often have the K to 12 schools with less than 100 students, where bus transportation is ruled out, or contained within a 10 km radius.

In the more populated rural areas, it is where one sees the bigger schools of 500 plus students, and sorts of different configurations of the K to 12 schools. The bus transportation costs are contained, and no student is on the bus for more than 45 minutes. The more populated rural areas, teachers do not really have the capacity to build relationships compared to the smaller schools of 250 or less,

Having schools of 250 or less, the real advantage is the building up of relationships over time, and it is hard to believe that parents opted for a K to 12 school of 500 students plus willingly and eager to save their school(s). In my corner of the world, parents would opt for two schools, the elementary in one community and the high school is the other community.

Wayne were the parents offered the above solution, or just the two options, of closing down the schools and busing the students to the schools in the other communities, or the all in one K to 12 school?

Just wondering, an observation after reading the numerous articles of rural school closures, and the ARC process in Ontario, schools are being closed down that are well under 500 students, and schools reconfigured to reach the magic number of 500 or so. It almost appears, that the rural school experience is being replaced with the urban school experience, of big schools versus small schools.

Our schools in Asia were K—12.  The older kids were great with the little ones. 
Here staffs’ salaries and benefits are so inflated that it’s cheaper to run a larger school.

Nancy,

The board offered to keep the elementary students in the community and bus the high school students to the nearest high school.  The parents pushed for the K-12 school.

Bev (sorry missed your post),

Whatever you may think of previous policy, you need to realize what most people commenting on this issue are missing.  Every one of the bargaining positions outlined by the Premier is designed to impact most greatly on one particular group of people - young teachers.

Wage/grid freezes (hurts those lowest on the pay grid the most), higher class sizes (causes more layoffs - again, young teachers), grandfathering the gratuity (means that new teachers will not get it, old teachers will) and fewer sick days/no accumulation (hurts young teachers, especially if they become seriously ill) all target one group.  Because they have already faced layoffs and teacher surpluses this group tends to be now mainly comprised of part-timers and occasional teachers.  Therefore, their income is already very tenuous and this will only make it worse.  I don’t like picking on the weak and helpless.

Say what you want about Mike Harris, he took on everyone, the weak and the strong.  McGuinty doesn’t have the stomach for it, he’d rather take on those that can’t defend themselves.  Some people have said that the union brass doesn’t speak for all teachers, that’s true.  However, McGuinty is doing an excellent job of teaching young teachers an unintended lesson:  support the union, it will stand up for you when you need it most.  Many of you have opined that you wish that the PSU’s would go away.  Bargaining positions like this are the best membership drive that the PSU’s could hope for - McGuinty is doing their job for them.

That’s an excellent perspective Wayne.  I think you are absolutely right on this.  It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall of some staff rooms these days!

I’m not convinced a top priority of the education system is to create teaching jobs… 

On the class size issue there’d be a moderate increase. largely back to where they were before Dalton cut them.  Essentially we’d be restoring them to where they’ve been for years, before being made artificially low.

On the issue of sick days and gratuities the assertion that it would mostly impact younger teachers that’d mean that there’d never be an appropriate time to deal with what is becoming very aggravating to lots of people.  Younger teachers already in the system would quite likely have whatever they’ve accumulated already and new-hires would have to decide whether or not they can live with the new conditions.  Heck, it might even be good if the “retirement gratuity” issue isn’t a key point for those entering the profession.

Workers all over the place are having to adjust their lives to deal with the economic situation we’re dealing with so there’d not be much sympathy at the plight of those bickering about a benefit most workers can barely dream of.

John,

“Younger teachers already in the system would quite likely have whatever they’ve accumulated already and new-hires would have to decide whether or not they can live with the new conditions.”  Sorry, they won’t. Dalton is simultaneously scrapping all accumulated sick days to date and ensuring that there is no longer any carryover.  From now on, it will be six days every year, no more - ‘smoke ‘em if you got ‘em’.  This particular aspect does hurt older teachers as well (as of August 31, 2012, I will lose 320 accumulated sick days)  However, it doesn’t matter if you have 32 or 320 sick days, this issue will hurt younger teachers more - they are lower on the pay scale and can ill afford to lose pay due to prolonged illness.

To answer another issue.  Some people wonder why we get paid for sick days at all.  There are several answers to that question.  One is the public health issue I mentioned.  Beyond that, most people don’t realize that we end up doing the work anyway:  we still set the lesson, provide the handout originals, mark any assignments or tests written by the students while we are away - the only thing we don’t do is any photocopying and deliver the lesson to the class.

The issue isn’t whether or not you should get sick days, rather the issue is that you’re credited with far more sick days than just about any other workers outside the public service.  As to what Dalton is scrapping I’d imagine he’d be quite willing to negotiate that if there’s any evidence the unions will move from the status quo

As to “six sick days every year” that’s six days at full pay and several weeks at two thirds pay.  Assuming teachers don’t routinely book off sick for prolonged periods every year the lost income is negligible over a career.

Teachers, young or older, who are off work for prolonged periods will still receive a reasonably good income.

Keep in mind this is all in context of lots of workers who have no paid sick time to fall back on in the event of illness.  In comparison the new level of teacher sick time provisions look very reasonable.

Wayne, I became curious why teachers do not received short-term sick benefits. I went to the web, and it does seem teachers do not received short-term sick benefits.

I am curious, because short-term sick benefits is usually a given in the better places to work at, or at the very least customary when I was working.

My question is Wayne, if you are off sick for 6 working days, would the banked sick days   accumulated by a teacher, kick in? 

I am just wondering about it, because the question that is circling in my head, when did the union brass trade off sick benefits for the present scheme,  of banking sick days?

From the facebook pages, another rumour is that with the new changes to sick days, the teachers will have the ability to send students home who are sick.Could not confirm it beyond facebook pages, but if I was a teacher, the union brass would have a lot of explaining to convince me that they are looking out for the best interests of teachers and their health.

It seems to me, that the teacher who becomes ill, are the ones that are penalized, while the healthy teachers accumulates sick days, even though they too should be at home, recovering from the flu.

Nancy,

You are correct when you noted that teachers do not currently have short-term disability benefits.  That was precisely because we could bank our sick days.  With up to 320 sick days to use up, short-term disability wasn’t necessary.  Now it will be.  There will no longer be any banking of sick days, so teachers will have to pay for short-term disability insurance.  The 20 days/year was a standard long before I started teaching.  I don’t think there was any trade off: teachers were given 20/year, therefore no need for insurance.

John,
I understand what you are saying, but you missed my point.  Let’s say I cooked at McDonalds.  If I take a day off, it would be without pay.  Now, let’s say that while I am at home, I have to sit on the phone for an hour with the replacement cook telling him/her what to do.  When I get back, my manager asks me to stay late and prep some tomatoes and lettuce because they got behind while I was away.  Now, I don’t get any pay for the day I was away, I don’t get any pay for training to cook over the phone, and I don’t get any pay for staying late and prepping all because I was off sick for one day.  Would you think that was fair?

You are forgetting, the teacher still prepares the lesson for the supply and marks all assignments and tests.  We still do all of the background work, we just don’t stand in front of the class.

Readers shouldn’t confuse long-term disability with short-term sick leave. They are entirely different. 

The sick leave is for the cold & flu stuff or longer with a doctor’s note.  Most of us wouldn’t begrudge anyone paying a premium for a benefit to have coverage for actual sickness for a resonable amount of time. It’s there, as insurance. 

However, what the public is raising an eyebrow over is the payout of banked, unused days upon retirement.  Not only that, the employer (taxpayer) is paying the in most cases 100% of the premiums! The costs are now very high for school boards see http://www.sunshineonschools.ca 

and http://www.etfo.ca/bargainingandagreements/comparingagreements/pages/default.aspx
“Your Sick Leave Entitlement
Your employer is not obligated to provide paid time off when you are sick – unless the collective agreement stipulates otherwise. By the same token, any retirement gratuity that you may receive as a result of banked sick leave is only there because your negotiators fought for it at the bargaining table.” —EFTO website

ETFO LTD booklet:  http://www.etfo.ca/Resources/ForTeachers/Documents/A Member’s Guide to Long Term Disability 2012.pdf

Private unions, at least the kind that I know, the union usually has an arrangement with the employer to share in costs of extended health benefits, long and short-term benefits, and pensions.

What I don’t get, is why the teachers’ unions went the pathway it did, and why previous governments went this pathway.

The banking of sick days, seems a recipe for padding pensions, rather than a plan looking after the health of teachers.

Another question, isn’t Ontario teachers paid full wage if they are sick for a day or two?  Rather a stupid question, but I guess not when the scheme is banking sick days.

Again, why hasn’t the union made an arrangement with the government, where teachers actually gets paid for one or two days of sick leave, and after two days, the short-term disability kicks in. Might be a lot cheaper for the taxpayers, and teachers may actually stay home, if they are sick.