If the OSSTF tentative agreement hurts students, I will be voting no.

Point final.

Increased class sizes hurt students. and 23:1 is, once again, an AVERAGE. In order for programs which need to be small (for example, intensive support programs for disabled students), this average means other classes will continue to balloon.

As Guidance counsellors and teacher Librarians are also included in these averages, Library and Guidance allocations will continue to be cut because of these averages.

This will harm students.

E-learning is still mandatory.
It is opt-out now, and not opt-in, as it has been for at least a decade.
Opt-out means parents/students over 18 need to take extra step to talk to Guidance (you know, that service that keeps getting cut due to class size increases?) to do so.

Opt-Out also means that boards can decide to cap the number of sections of required courses and electives, and shift the overflow to e-learning. Which means that if you're not fast/lucky enough to fit into those caps, even if you want to opt out, e-learning will be only option.

These two bargaining items will cause measurable harm to our students. There's no question. They will also serve to further dismantle publicly funded secondary education in this province, which hurts future students.

This pandemic crisis-based remote learning is laying bare the inequities we know exist in schools. We should be fighting to REDUCE these inequities, not agreeing to increase them.

Voting yes to this agreement also destroys the solidarity that contract teachers have been trying to uphold with occasional teachers, adult day school teachers, and non-teaching support staff also under OSSTF, whose salaries are dramatically lower than they should be.

As a contract teacher, there's no question that I make decent money. Occasional teachers do not. Adult Day School teachers absolutely do not. Child and Youth Counsellors, equity staff, and other non-teaching workers are also still underpaid.

The least paid of us also have the worst working conditions. Cuts to CYC/CYW and other support staff means workload has gone up dramatically, reducing the time support staff can spend with individual students. ADS teachers have no prep time and often have 50+ students per class.

Adult students are incredibly vulnerable, for the record. Many are sole support parents, newcomers, English language learners, and those who were, for equity-based reasons, unsuccessful in traditional schooling. having 50+ of them in a classroom doesn't set them up for success.

Without education support workers, many of our students in traditional school settings don't get their needs met, which increases their risk of chronic absenteeism and eventually just not finishing.

So. Once again.

If this deal causes harm to students. I will vote no.

And I encourage all my union siblings to do the same.

Let me be clear: not having a concrete agreement causes me huge amounts of anxiety.

I will suck that up and still vote no.