Over 300 education workers across Renfrew County are on strike today. Local District 28 OSSTF President, Christian Sell, says they have 210 full time teachers, 60 occasional, 50 early childhood educators and 10 office managers on the picket lines. Sell says staff are outside of every public high school in the county except in Pembroke, where they’re gathered outside the office of MPP John Yakabuski. Sell says nobody was looking forward to today, but they’re out in the cold fighting to maintain the current education system.
Sell says they tried to avoid the strike by proposing to return to the 2018/2019 staffing levels and going back to the table to hammer out the rest of the issues. He adds this proposal was not accepted by the government and there are no future negotiation dates set. He says the increase in class size will have a tremendous impact on local schools. Sell says this year, they moved from 22 to 22.5 kids per classroom and the government is considering going up to 28. He says in Pembroke alone this would result in 11 fewer teachers with the same number of students and 66 fewer courses. Sell says they’re on strike defending public education, fighting against increased class sizes, mandatory e-learning and support for vulnerable people.
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