Ontario Public School Boards’ Association 439 University Avenue, 18th Floor , ON M5G 1Y8 Tel: (416) 340-2540 Fax: (416) 340-7571 [email protected] www.opsba.org

July 30, 2012

The Honourable Laurel Broten Minister of Education Ministry of Education 22nd Floor, Mowat Block 900 Bay Street Toronto, M7A 1L2 [email protected]

Dear Minister Broten,

OPSBA’s bargaining goals, as determined by our member boards, are student-centred, and intentionally designed to enhance student, staff, and parent engagement, and the optimum development of nurturing and safe school environments. Our member Boards recognize the need for the financial restraints in the school board sector that will contribute to the management of Ontario’s budget deficit. Collective Agreements, however, are about much more than the "money issues" of salary and benefits. The Education Act imposes on Boards the duty to ensure student well-being and success. Implicit in this legal requirement is an obligation to pursue collective agreement provisions that would not in any way reduce supports that provide for student well-being and success, or that would diminish public confidence in our schools. Our member Boards are committed to that obligation.

For the past two years OPSBA has engaged in an extensive consultation with our member boards in order to determine what the priorities should be in this round of bargaining. Early in the bargaining process, and again during a July 16 meeting with your bargaining team, we identified the priorities that we had hoped would be part of the PDT discussions with teachers, and which, to date, remain unresolved. These priorities are aligned with the government’s goals of improving student achievement, closing the gap, and improving public confidence in publicly funded education.

The issues that need to be resolved in order to meet these goals are:

a) Eliminating language in collective agreements that hampers our ability to attract and retain principals and vice-principals; b) Increasing the amount of supervision time that can be assigned to employees who know the students well; c) Enhancing our ability to use professional development days, and some of the preparation time teachers receive, for the purpose of increasing teacher skills without disrupting student learning time; d) Ensuring that teachers and other staff are available to meet with parents at times that are convenient for the parent; e) Ensuring that teaching teams are available to meet with other professionals in order to design the best possible educational experience for students who find learning challenging; and f) Changing the current provisions for sick leave by putting in place a system that recognizes illness, without being unnecessarily punitive.

OPSBA has worked diligently over the past five months to remain at each of the provincial discussion tables. We have notified your team of the discussions we have had with our unions in spite of their refusal

to sit at the PDT, and have apprised your team of the progress, issues, and the areas that could enhance the opportunity to reach an agreement with the various union groups. We continue to use our positive working relationships to encourage the unions to rejoin the formal discussions in an effort to reach agreements that balance meeting the government’s fiscal targets with supporting the conditions that contribute to student success. We believe that having all parties at the table is essential to achieving outcomes that maintain respectful relationships in schools and workplaces over the long term; for this reason we are concerned about a process that would leave either of the essential bargaining parties out of a signed MOU.

Throughout the provincial discussion process we have sought, and continue to support and defend, those measures that allow schools, school boards and the staff who work there to meet their responsibilities under the Education Act, most specifically our moral and legislated accountability for student achievement, student safety and well-being. We strongly believe that there are elements beyond the fiscal parameters in the MOU that you signed with OECTA that will make it more difficult to meet our common goals:

i. The elimination of professional development days in year two, and perhaps on an ongoing basis, makes the delivery of professional development to improve instructional practice difficult to do without increasing disruptions to classrooms by removing teachers during the instructional day; ii. The restrictions placed on the system-wide use of diagnostic assessment data will reduce the amount of useful data available to schools and school boards in developing and monitoring school and board improvement plans; iii. Introducing seniority as the eventual determining factor in a hiring practice is inconsistent with best practice in hiring; issues that may exist in board hiring practices would be better dealt with outside of the collective agreement; and iv. The removal of the secondary and elementary enhancement monies in order to achieve the financial targets negatively affects elementary professional development, and the secondary student success program. The latter in particular is of great importance in helping at-risk students succeed in school, and is directly related to the government’s goal of increasing secondary school graduation rates.

Boards are very mindful of the desire of the government to preserve labour peace and stability in our schools and classrooms. We share that desire. However, if our member boards have to protect themselves financially by moving through the conciliation process under the Labour Relations Act, labour peace and stability in our school boards will be profoundly compromised, and lead to serious negative impacts on our classrooms and students.

OPSBA has appreciated this government’s support for students and publicly funded education. It is not by chance that Ontario’s school system is considered one of the best in the world. That level of achievement is the result of a collaborative effort of teachers, support staff, school board administrators, trustees and the government who fulfill their respective roles for the benefit of students.

We will continue to take every opportunity to work towards realistic agreements with our unions, and with the government, that will ensure that students are well served, and that the government’s and the Premier’s education legacy continues.

Yours truly,

Lori Lukinuk, Gail Anderson, First Vice President Executive Director

Cc: Premier Dalton McGuinty Patricia Sorbara, Chief of Staff OPSBA Trustees & Directors of Education OCSTA, ACEPO and AFOCSC