Teachers will be holding a rally in Parry Sound tomorrow.
It’s another “Pink Slip Rally” in support of the teachers that have been declared redundant by the Near North District School Board. Across the school board, 114 high school and 62 elementary teachers have been given layoff notices.
Although this is a normal process for this time of the year, the board admits there was an usually large number of notices given out this year. The board says it’s overestimating the number of layoffs because it isn’t sure yet what funding it’s going to be getting from the provincial government.
Meanwhile, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation says the late announcement of annual provincial budgets for schools, coupled with the cancellation of several programming grants, has “caused chaos at the school board, since staffing and timetabling is usually complete by this point in the year.”
“My members were devastated by the job loss and even more upset by the continued confusion and lack of clarity on funding for our school board”, stated Glen Hodgson. President of the OSSTF in the Near North. “There is no doubt that the current government has thrown our education system into chaos and there is also little doubt that the Near North is being disproportionally affected by these cuts.”
The union believes it will still be weeks before the Near North board has it’s full budget in hand.
“We also know that this uncertainty and loss of decent jobs will affect the local economy in all of our communities, and it places programming and schools at risk” reiterated Hodgson.
The union is welcoming members of the public to join the rally. It’s happening in front of Parry Sound-Muskoka MPP Norm Miller’s office starting at 4:00pm.