Dear Parents and Guardians,

We are writing to update you on recently announced job actions by the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO).

As you know, ETFO is currently in contract negotiations with the Government of Ontario and the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, and the union has been taking part in a selected withdrawal of services since November 2019. Yesterday, ETFO announced the next phases of its job action, the first of which is set to begin on Monday, January 13.

If a contract agreement is not reached by Monday, ETFO members will:

• Not participate in extracurricular activities except for those that are scheduled within the regular school day;
• Not participate in field trips (including to TDSB Outdoor Education Centres);
• Not plan or participate in any assemblies, except to provide supervision to students;
• Not arrive at work any earlier than 30 minutes before the start of the instructional day for students; and
• Not remain at the worksite later than 15 minutes after the end of the instructional day for students.

ETFO also announced that if no agreement is reached by Friday, January 17, 2020, effective Monday, January 20, 2020, ETFO will commence a full-withdrawal of services strike on a rotating basis. If this full withdrawal of services takes place, the TDSB would have no other option but to close all elementary schools to students as there would not be sufficient supervision to ensure their safety. At this point in time, we do not have any additional information about the timing of these potential rotating strikes. As soon as we receive more information, we will update parents/guardians.

We recognize that parents/guardians will have a number of questions about field trips and extracurricular activities. At this time, all field trips scheduled to take place during the job action will be cancelled. Additional details about specific field trips, including refunds, as well as answers about extracurricular activities will be communicated by your school in the very near future.

We regret this disruption and understand your disappointment; however, we appreciate your continued understanding and patience during this time. We remain hopeful that an agreement with ETFO can be achieved in the very near future to minimize any further impact on our students.