Dance with the one that funds you

As of this week, by my count, only one (two?) teachers' federation remains at the provincial discussion table with the Ontario Ministry of Education. Only the Ontario English Catholic Teaches' Association (OECTA) and maybe one of the French-language teachers' unions remain at the table.
For those catching up, the PDTs are the vehicle by which the bulk of collective agreements in the K-12 education sector in Ontario have been settled since the Liberals took office in 2003. It's one way of settling the big questions revolving around money and provincewide working conditions at a single table, producing a template shell of an agreement that can be taken back to the 72 publicly funded school boards to finalize local issues and ratify.
Though the Liberals have approached the PDTs in a different way for each round of contracts, they have until now produced good contracts for teachers and other people working in the education sector as per-pupil spending has surpassed $10,000 per student.
It's the PDTs that have given teachers good contracts. So good, as I've written before, that those at the top of their grids will be on the so-called Sunshine List in either 2013 of 2014 by way of simple compound mathematics.
As written in May 2009;

Anyone making $88K in those employee groups on Aug. 31, 2008, just signed a deal in the last nine months that will see them reach $100K by 2012. Meaning in either 2013 or 2014, they'll be on the Sunshine List too.

I make no apologies-- but for a classroom teacher that's a very good compensation package. In Ontario, teachers and other workers in the education sector are fairly compensated for their educational and work-experience backgrounds.
PDTs also make sense because since 1998, the province funds almost all of the revenues received by a school board. While the step of full-on provincial bargaining has never actually happened, you're living in a fantasy world if you don't think the federations haven't been bargaining provincially for years. The routine appointment of a provincial table officer at all local negotiations is only the first proof of this.
At the PDT, the federations, school boards and government would come to an agreement on what would be funded and what the money would be used to accomplish. It's been successful and has drawn attention around the world for how to set goals and then orient an entire sector to reach for them.
This year, the province publicly launched negotiations by stating all the things it wouldn't do-- give raises in the first two years, allow for anyone to climb the grid, etc. Here's the thing though-- even with those take-it-or-leave-it public statements, the money available (though continually directed at provincial priorities) isn't dropping. Job losses in the sector are due almost entirely to declining enrolment, not cuts to specific programs-- though specific programs are under the gun where there are not enough students to support them.
This government has a knack for making bold statements in public, but then sitting down and working out a deal. The federations have run away from that table -- perhaps hoping a "me too" clause can save whatever deal is worked out with those who remain behind.
This whole thing is a long dance-- negotiations always are -- and it's far from over as I don't expect any labour issues until at least September, but 2013 would be a safer bet.
The federations that have walked away may be counting on public sympathy, but after eight generous years, it's doubtful they'll find in in the same way they did during previous government tenures.
Further, while the employer of record is still the local school board, my faith that local boards will negotiate to pay for things with money they haven't been given is non-existent.
The smart thing here is to come back to the table and keep talking. You gotta keep the dance going or risk being left outside the dance hall when the band and rental contract are signed for another four years-- just ask the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, who managed to lose parity for walking away in 2008-09.

Peterborites take notice

Peterborough College and Vocational School (PCVS) supporters have had a buoyant few weeks.
As followers of the time line for the school would know, it was recently spoken about on CBC Radio Q on March 29. That was the week the nation learned PCVS students and their community had -- in an initiative at least one supporter took pains to tell me over twitter was NOT related to ongoing save-PCVS advocacy -- won the "Spread the Net" challenge.
Which earned the school a coveted spot on the Rick Mercer Report's season finale last week where he even, mirroring the rant done by the current student council president, ranted about it. Bravo. A coincidentally orchestrated collision of gushing media coverage that while not really about the school closing was really and entirely about the opposition that remains to that school closing. That was impressive.
Unfortunately, and particularly when under the gun or after the decision's been made to close a school, many many many schools are fantastic and the greatest schools ever where people are encouraged to be all they can be and no one is ever bullied and every course that anyone ever wants to take is offered ... and... and... so on. While PCVS is impressive for all these things, its heritage and more, it's not unique in those respects. It's not every school, but it's not the only school.
Call me jaded and skeptical or stupid or whatever. For over three years I've been reading and learning about every school closure in this province that got even an ounce of media coverage and even covered a few myself. The wheel has been reinvented so many times on how communities react and plan on this I've lost count. Just tonight I was monitoring a storyline in St. Catharines / Thorold seemingly headed in exactly the same direction as this Peterborough decision.
'Twas shortly before this supporters learned of facilitator Joan Greene's report, completed after the community petitioned the decision of the Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB trustees made in September. It found two "technical" violations of the KPRDSB's own accommodation review guidelines, but not enough to warrant recommending the board repeat the review.
The community is now banking on the publicity earned by its recent showcases and amassing dollars for a judicial review of the board's decision. While I seriously, seriously doubt it will be successful in overturning the decision (based exclusively on not having learned of a successful judicial-review reversal yet after some extensive research), I plead with anyone interested in this situation to take heed. Temper your expectations.
Be very, very aware of what a judicial review can and cannot accomplish. Search for and read through the many, many posts here in this space regarding Niagara District Secondary School in Niagara-on-the-Lake. They went through the judicial review process after waiting too long and as a result the request was quashed. No sense reviewing what has already proceeded too quickly and substantially along to reverse.
I'm no lawyer, but if the fundraising target is met and the decision is made to proceed, the moment after that application for judicial review is filed it might be prudent to file a series of applications for injunctions. One to stop PCVS from closing until the judicial review is either complete or the application is rejected by the court. Another to pause the work -- renovations, etc. -- being done at the receiving school, Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School (TASSS). The fact this work has continued helps put several nails in the coffin.
I don't fault the board for moving forward. It has to or else no school board anywhere would ever be able to close a school and plan for what happens next. A process that already takes 18 months to two years would never end. Given the province seems to finally be getting serious about ending the perpetual declining-enrolment adjustment grant, this is a scenario, along with other school closures, that will repeat itself. Unless, of course, we all starting having many more babies and find a way to also magically and instantly create a bunch of eight-to-12-year-olds kids.
Speaking of planning for what happens next, PCVS supporters need to be prepared for all outcomes. Life goes on and appropriate attention needs to be paid to ensure students are taken care of next year and the year after and after. Don't short the PCVS students of today by refusing to accept the school will close in June and its students will be accommodated at TASSS in the fall. Then you're only creating the self-sustaining storyline. Suggestions on local media comment boards that save-PCVSers discouraged students from completing course-selection properly for the fall are simply discouraging to read even when I doubt it may have happened.
PCVS may very well be the best school ever. But if a judicial review doesn't keep it that way, then students deserve only the same, very best in their receiving schools.

Now 'tumbling' what I've been reading

I've made a change to the setup around here to better recognize the differences in how I've used this space. I'm happy that as of now, instead of creating aggregation posts as I've increasingly done in the past year, those will now live on a Tumblr page at tumblr.educationreporter.ca.
I've fed the RSS feed of that page onto a panel right below my profile at right featuring the most recent five items. To go directly to the tumblr page, there is also a direct link above.
Why do this?
I've been finding in recent months the original idea of posting something here about every K-12 education web article I'd read was becoming increasingly difficult to do with other constraints on my time.
Facing a slew of open browser tabs every time I wanted to write about something really important or do original reporting of some kind was discouraging.
By aggregating those clips into a separate area, it's my hope this space here on the blog will open for more content posts-- opinion and analysis as well as original material.
Any feedback and thoughts on this new arrangement are encouraged!

Mother of all aggregation posts

Here's what's been coming across the desk in the last month.
Capital

• The Thorold News on the high school closure review in St. Catharines and points southwest, a review also touched on in this St. Catharines Standard coverage regarding the Town's letter to the province, a columnist's take on the issue;
• The Kenora Daily Miner and News covers an early school-closure review meeting;
• Owen Sound Sun Times on the closure of four tech centres for full-day kindergarten;
• St. Catharines Standard on an elementary public school-closure meeting;
• The Barrie Examiner on whether the Simcoe County DSB retrofits/renovates or rebuilds an old, inaccessible school building and the Orillia Packet and Times on the decision to ask for funds to rebuild and seeking partnerships for the build;
• The Tillsonburg News covers the first meeting of an elementary school-closure review committee -- before and after;
• The Sudbury Star unveils the new Sudbury Secodnary School;
• The Fort Erie Times on the DSB Niagara's consideration of a school-closure report for the town;
• The Hamilton Spectator on a Hamilton-Wentworth DSB decision to close a school;
• The Simcoe Reformer on the Norfolk County mayor weighing in on the high school closure review, the release of an internet survey, and on how religion might save PDCS;
• The Goderich Signal-Star on a new-rural-school option considered (again) by a school-closure committee;
• The Peterborough Examiner on doctors' calls for PCVS to stay open (joined recently by mental-health professionals), a silent protest that stopped a Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB meeting,
• The Sault Star on a new Catholic high school's name;
• The Barrie Examiner on a citywide Catholic school-closure review; and,
• The Lake of the Woods Enterprise on speeding up a school-closure review;

Governance / Curriculum

• The Mid-North Monitor on a sharing agreement with the Town of Espanola and all local boards;
• The Owen Sound Sun Times on the Bluewater DSB's commitment to outdoor ed and an expansion of abilities for its student trustees and new concerns over declining enrolment with an eye on the Catholic board;
• The Peterborough Examiner on there being no Ojibway-language classes in local schools;
• The Pembroke Observer explains what Parent Involvement Committees are;
• The Observer again, as the Renfrew County DSB boasts of its strategic planning;
• Wifi coverage galore-- from the Peterborough Examiner on the board of health's opinion and trustee's response/discussion, St. Catherines with an early piece on the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Assocation anti-wifi moves complete with response from the local Catholic board, CBC Ottawa on parents' concerns in schools there and the Petrolia Topic on its Catholic board not backing down on wifi;
• The Ottawa Citizen on the rejection of a failed candidate's call for religious policy review;
• The Citizen again with a fantastic three-part data journalism on out-of-area high school attendance-- part one, part two, part three;
• The Gananoque Reporter gets an Upper Canada DSB trustee's perspective on newsletters;
• Globe and Mail editorial on bullying being confronted yet acknowledged;
• The Barrie Examiner on a school-safety related teacher walkout;
• The Citizen again on the Ottawa Catholic board's charges in a school explosion; and,
• The Belleville Intelligencer on a complaint a two-year disciplinary process for a teacher takes too long.

Happy reading. No Drummond here-- still saving that more a separate, in-depth post.

Early February tab dump

One week generated a lot of education coverage in the ol' inbox.
Capital

• The Sudbury Star letter on the public being shut out / stage-managed at a school-review meeting;
• The Northern News on a school-closure tied to an enrolment threshold, with busing implications, with the board meeting coverage later in the week;
• The Sault Star on a new French-language school's solar roof;
• The Barrie Examiner on a new Catholic elementary school review kicking off in the north end of that city;
• The Strathroy Age-Dispatch on post-closure boundary adjustments (or lack thereof);
• The Sudbury Star on the Near North DSB's decision to freeze all school reviews (!!);
• The Sudbury Star on the latest 'green' school construction;
• The St. Catharines Standard on a community resigned to closure of its Catholic elementary school;
• The Niagara Falls Review on the vote to close a Catholic elementary school; and,
• The Standard again with coverage of the St. Catharines - Thorold high school review meeting, and a post-meeting proposal to shift lines on a map.

Enrolment / demographics

• The Owen Sound Sun Times on a parent's concern too many public-school-supporter families' children are attending Catholic school;
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• The London Free Press on ad campaigns from coterminous boards in the region targeting different age groups; and,
• The Toronto Star's moneyville on people making correlations between test scores and housing prices.

Governance / curricula

• The Chatham This Week localizes the bus consortium RFP impact;
• The Toronto Star's coverage of a teacher taking his former Catholic principal before the Ontario College of Teachers over the GSA issue;
• The St. Catharines Standard on teachers and technology;
• The North Bay Nugget on vending-machine revenue drops;
• The Star's QP columnist (among others), takes on Dalton vs. the Catholic school system over the GSA issue;
• The Brockville Recorder and Times with a editorial in support (which is rare, of late) of school-bus consortiums;
• The Pembroke Observer's coverage of the Catholic board's strategic-plan review;
• The Hamilton Spectator on a Hamilton-Wentworth DSB trustee's move to have a full external review of how the board does its thing; and,
• The mayor in the Northern News piece mentioned above bristles at the critique from the board he enrols his own kids elsewhere.

The Moneyville piece had me thinking-- that's really not what the data was meant to support, but in a way it does reflect the continuing reality of what the data shows. Those who are better off in life do better in school. Those who are not don't do as well. But what preceded what? A noggin' scratcher of a chicken-and-egg that one is.
The Free Press piece also had me laughing, as this is the district I used to cover. The public board knows it loses kids to the Catholic system in Grade 9, whose schools are bigger, more modern, etc. etc. The Catholic board is being slammed by declining enrolment in elementary and trying to keep its smaller number of full-day kindergarten sites as attractive compared to the larger selection of public sites.
More on ARC stuff and the continuing GSA saga (and yes, that's what it's becoming) in other posts.

Drummoned?

Though the speculation today is all about what changes may be coming to the healthcare system (delisting things from OHIP, etc.), I have no doubt the players in our provincial education system are watching carefully.
The reports came out earlier this month across all media about consultant Don Drummond's pending report to the McGuinty government with its cost-containment recommendations. As health and education are (in that order) the province's biggest bills, keeping an eye on how the overall report is released and its recommendations received is important for both sectors.
What did we learn earlier this month?
The biggest ed-related item was a call for the province to re-evaluate its primary class size (PCS) program. As most familiar with it would know, this investment in education came out of the Liberals' first mandate, when it was a centrepiece of the party's education platform. With the odd exception here or there within a handful of years, 90% of the province's kindergarten through Grade 3 classes had ratios of 20 students to one teacher. The remaining 10% had a hard cap of no more than 23 students to one teacher.
That ratio changed a bit in the early years / kindergarten classes as full-day kindergarten gets rolled out across the province, as it allows up to 26 students to one teacher and one early childhood educator.
The edu-academics were all over the PCS from when it was first announced -- as were some school boards who identified they would have issues with providing the necessary physical classroom space. The research is, to be fair, varied on class size vs. other factors when it comes to student improvement. Fewer than 20 students with a poorly trained teacher do worse than 30 students with a well-trained teacher, etc.
The PCS always sold well with parents however. Parents who vote. Who were tired of seeing a blended class size average in elementary of 26 (with boards being allowed to push that to 27 under some circumstances). Some of that excitement faded with the increase in split-grade classes caused when PCS was implemented, but a big portion of that was how the system reacted to a class cap combined with overall declining enrolment.
Will it become the sacrificial lamb to squeeze money out of education spending? I'm doubtful a government led by a premier who has long fashioned himself as an "education premier" would start hacking away at one of the key parts of the platform that won him a first majority government.
Similarly, most new funding in education is being directed at FDK implementation-- something all three parties supported in the campaign, so it's doubtful there'll be many chainsaws taken to that program unless people change their tunes (again).
Something that didn't come out? Both the PCS and FDK initiatives have helped stem job losses in the ranks of teachers as they bolstered staffing in years that declining enrolment was having its biggest impact. That population decline is now set to move through high schools twice as fast as it moved through the K-8 panel-- and with all of the Learning to 18 programs now fully implemented, there won't be many new programs to save jobs when the student numbers are no longer there to support them.
Given it's doubtful the province will ask its education-sector employee federations to agree to zero-increase contracts, the path ahead for the Liberals may be in trying to balance the expected decline in staffing (particularly in secondary) with any increases in wages and benefits. Keep it at a net-zero level and you can make it through a mandate without allowing education spending to balloon.
More on this once Drummond's recommendations go public.

January browser-tab dump

Back to my recent habits of tabbing up by browser until I hit this point.
Capital

• The Peterborough Examiner's continuing PCVS coverage-- the naming of facilitator Joan Green, the announcement of her public meeting, some pre-Green meeting advice, Green's meetings with the press (!!), coverage of the meeting itself and the approval of renovation funding for TASSS;
• The Hamilton Spectator on concern over an Ancaster high school's review;
• The Orillia Packet & Times on how a school project might be the board's priority but not the ministry's;
• The Kirkland Lake-based Northern News on a school closure in Timiskaming;
• The Timmins Daily Press on a capital-funding announcement for a French public school;
• The Owen Sound Sun Times on the Bluewater DSB's building bee;
• The Packet & Times checks in with members of a school-closure review looking at schools in Moonstone;
• The Ottawa Citizen speaks to a defeated candidate for trustee calling for new schools in Kanata;
• The Barrie Examiner's coverage of the Simcoe County DSB's decision to delay a high school closure review in the city;
• The St. Catharines Standard on a school-closure review of parts of the city and Thorold narrowing its list of recommendations;
• Followed by a local perspective from the Thorold News from the same meeting, a perspective that also appears in a second Standard article;
• The Simcoe Reformer's continuing coverage of the school-closure review underway in Norfolk County-- getting crabby on busing before the meeting and at the meeting itself;
• The Stratford Beacon Herald on two trustees' baptism by fire on accommodation issues at their own childrens' schools;
• The Goderich Signal-Star does a so-called "advancer" on a school-closure review meeting;
• The Barrie Examiner again on a Catholic elementary school review resuming its work; and,
• The Peterborough Examiner on a call from an employee union to clean up asbestos before it gets disturbed.

Governance / Curricula

• The Hamilton Spectator on changes to the the Ontario College of Teachers online member database;
• The Spec on the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic DSB's no-GSA decision;
• The Toronto Star on a parent's court challenge of Catholic-school funding;
• The Waterloo Region Record's continuing coverage of the DSB's decisions on full-day kindergarten wraparound programs;
• The Ottawa Citizen on an arts programming review; 
• The Welland Tribune on a small bump in enrolment at the DSB Niagara;
• The North Bay Nugget covers a trustee objecting to her big-spender characterization;
• The Owen Sound Sun Times writes about Bluewater DSB's strategic plan;
• The St. Thomas Times-Journal on the Thames Valley DSB's review of bell times; and,
• The Welland Tribune gets the local view on "respecting differences."

Haven't touched too much on the continuing gay-straight alliance kerfuffles (my views on this for regular readers are well-known), nor the speculation over what Don Drummond might include in his recommendations, which I'll write a separate post on.