Ontario elementary-school report cards will be sent in some areas, but not Toronto
Windsor, Barrie, Niagara regions among those able to issue report cards despite work-to-rule
Some elementary students in Ontario will still receive report cards despite a province-wide work-to-rule action, but the 170,000 students in Toronto will not be among them.
Elementary teachers in the province's public system are obeying the law by submitting marks to school administrators. But to protest against stalled contract talks, they are refusing to enter those grades into the computer system.
Toronto, Peel and York boards say they don't have enough non-teaching staff to do the job, so they won't issue report cards to elementary students. Instead, students will receive simple letters announcing what grade each child will enter in September.
Donnie Straker, chair of the Toronto School Administrators' Association, which represents school principals, says that would be too much work for administrators and other non-unionized staff in the city.
"The data entry alone works out to about 5,500 pieces of data that need to be entered," she told Metro Morning host Matt Galloway. "We have around 500 administrators to do the work of 10,000 teachers."
However, boards in Windsor, Barrie, Haliburton-Muskoka, Niagara, Greater Essex, Simcoe County and Trillium Lakelands regions say they will still be able to issue report cards.
"The entering of the marks was done by school principals and their office staff," said Kim Yielding, a spokeswoman for the District School Board of Niagara. "We were able to provide a report card with marks, rather than simply a promotion letter."
Sam Hammond, president of Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, which announced the work-to-rule in April, believes all the boards should be able to provide full grades to parents.
"The Toronto District School Board, for example, proportionally has the same amount of staff or more staff ... than those boards who are able to get those marks out," he said. "I cannot for the life of me understand why they can't make that happen."