TCDSB Reaches Agreement

(TORONTO, ON) – Parents of students in the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) will be assured that classes will not be disrupted by labour action, following a decision of the board to put students first.

Last night, TCDSB – the province’s largest Catholic school board, serving 93,000 students – passed a motion indicating its intention to sign on to the Memorandum of Understanding reached between the Ministry of Education and the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association (OECTA). Once signed, this locally bargained agreement will protect the classroom experience while meeting the board’s fiscal targets.

The TCDSB is the first major school board to implement the agreement reached between the Ministry of Education and OECTA and has demonstrated provincial leadership in its decision. The agreement was the result of difficult discussions over several months at the Provincial Discussion Table designed to allow teacher unions to work with the province toward shared fiscal goals.

This agreement will prevent the automatic rollover of teacher contracts that are set to expire on August 31, 2012. This automatic rollover would have led to salary increases of 5.5 per cent for many teachers and resulted in the accumulation of two million more teacher sick days province-wide that could be cashed out at retirement.

The leadership the TCDSB has demonstrated will prevent the board from incurring an additional $3.7 million in costs associated with the rollover of the salary grid. This means that the board will be able to balance its budget and continue to enrich the classroom experience for students.

The Ontario government urges all other boards in the province to follow TCDSB’s lead. After six months of discussions, boards have just under four weeks to work with their local bargaining units to sign local agreements consistent with the OECTA Memorandum of Understanding. As TCDSB demonstrated last night, it is possible to get approval from local trustees before the start of the school year.

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