BY KATY LEROUGETEL
TORONTO - In the Greater Toronto Area, 7,400 teachers were either locked out or on strike as of mid-September. Across Ontario, an estimated 180,000 students have been affected by the confrontation between teachers and school boards seeking to implement provincial government-imposed guidelines.

On September 14, 1,760 public secondary school teachers in the York region near Toronto staged a one-day strike, the first in a series of rotating work stoppages planned to protest government cutbacks.

One thousand high school teachers locked out by the Catholic school board in Toronto staged a protest rally in front of the board meeting September 10.

Their colleagues on strike in the Dufferin-Peel region expanded picketing at the Catholic Education Centre offices near Toronto to stretch between 4:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. on September 21 and 22, in an effort to reach out to other working people and parents going by.

Funds continue to be cut from the education budget and hundreds of teachers are being laid off. In this context, the government stipulation that class sizes be reduced to an average ratio of one high school teacher per 22 students amounts to demanding an extra 75 minutes of classroom time a day from teachers.

"Enough is enough. We just can't take it anymore," high school teacher Lloyd-Graham told the Toronto Star as he picketed during the York region one-day strike.

Teachers explain the increased class time will force them to eliminate extracurricular activities such as sports and student clubs, as well as reduce individual time with students and preparation time for teaching.

Irene, who teaches at a Catholic high school in Toronto, told the Militant at the September 10th rally that the government "expects us to teach from 8:30 to 4:30 and then to coach basketball, music. And when are we supposed to go to the bathroom? In my school there are three minutes between periods, and if I'm teaching three in a row, I barely have time to get from one class to another."

As he left the rally, Andrew O'Hanley said, "A lot of teachers are looking at the hospitals and [saying] this is us two years from now." Cutbacks have created notoriously inadequate conditions in Canadian health-care facilities.

Some parents have organized highly publicized actions against the teachers. According to the daily Toronto Star, 150 parents and students rallied outside school board offices north of Toronto on September 19. Julie Santori told the Star, "I don't want my children being governed by a union. This is a democratic country."

The provincial government is insisting school boards strictly implement the government guidelines in the region-by- region, board-by-board negotiations, which continue. The government also denies any plans to legislate teachers back to work soon.

Katy LeRougetel is a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 5338.  
 
 
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