From the Brantford Expositor
TEACHERS VOW TO FIGHT JOB LOSSES
By VINCENT BALL, Expositor Staff
BRANTFORD -- High school teachers were still reeling from the news Thursday
that more than 150 of their colleagues will be out of work at the end of the
school year, says a teacher representative.
``There's a great deal of anger out there and a lot of people are still in
shock,'' said Dale Fisher, president of District Five of the Ontario
Secondary School Teachers' Federation.
``Everyone was just so surprised by the sheer number of layoff notices. No
one expected it to be that many.''
However, he said teachers are determined to fight the job loss and will
embark on another campaign to educate the public about how these cuts will
affect classroom education.
``These firings will have an immediate devastating impact on the functioning
of our schools in September 1998,'' Fisher said.
Students will no longer have the benefits that come from working with
teachers who have time for a variety of activities including individual
student counselling, extra-curricular activities and prepare lesson plans.
In Brant County, 66 teachers received layoff notices on Thursday.
North Park Collegiate principal David Dean, who had to hand out 14 layoff
notices on Thursday, described the mood at the school as sombre and subdued.
``It was the worst day I've had at school in 30 years,'' Dean said. ``But I
must commend the teachers because they handled it with courage and
dignity.''
The teachers who received notices on Thursday have the same personal
challenges as anyone else, Dean said. Some have young families, mortgages or
are the single-income earners.
The layoffs, coupled with retirements at North Park, will make staffing for
September even more challenging than usual, Dean said.
``We're going to have some vacancies here but right now we don't how they're
going to be filled,'' Dean said.
The challenge for principals, he said, will be to ensure the teachers coming
into the school will have the same expertise and skills as those who have
left. And that, he added, isn't going to be easy.
Pink slips were also handed out to 14 teachers at Brantford Collegiate
Institute and Pauline Johnson Collegiate. Tollgate Technological Skills
Centre is losing 10, Paris District High is losing nine while Burford
District High is losing three. Two teachers at the Brant Alternative
Learning Centre wire handed layoff notices on Thursday.
When the layoff notices were handed out Fisher blasted local school board
officials for not looking for alternatives.
School board officials are blaming the layoffs on a decline in enrolment and
a new funding formula which restricts their ability to move money around for
different programs.
But Fisher said he believes the school board can decide how to spend money
provided by the provincial government and since the Grand Erie board is
receiving roughly the same amount of money it received last year, there
shouldn't be a need for teacher layoffs.
However, education director Peter Moffatt said there really isn't any way to
avoid layoffs.
Although the board has the same amount of money to spend in the coming
school year as it did last year, it is being asked to do more, Moffatt said.
Specifically, the board has $4.7 million to spend on an early childhood
education program and has decided to re-introduce junior kindergarten.
At the same time, the amount of money the board has for department heads and
guidance counsellors has been drastically reduced. And Bill 160 requires
high school teachers to spend more time teaching and less time preparing for
classes during the workday.
The overall result is that there will be fewer high school teachers in the
schools but those who are there will be spending more time in class.
Mofatt likened the funding formula to a gigantic shell game but he added
that it has been well designed by the provincial government to control
spending.
Fisher has also criticized the board for not offering teachers a early
retirement incentive program.
The board has offered such a program to its non-union employees, including
principals, vice-principals and administrators, but not to its teachers.
Moffatt said an early retirement incentive plan has its drawbacks and is
something that should be addressed during negotiations.
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