This memo is composed by OSSTF TTBU President Leslie Wolfe and reflects the positions and actions of the OSSTF Toronto Teachers’ Bargaining Unit Executive.
This morning the President of OSSTF Toronto sent the following letter to the Interim Director, Interim Associate Directors and Chair of the Toronto District School Board in response to their decision to recognize the additional work done by principals and vice principals to the exclusion of all others.
Kathy, Andrew, Karen, Manon and Alexander
I am writing to you on behalf of my Members to express repugnance and outrage at the TDSB’s decision to provide monetary and lieu time recognition in thanks to only managers while ignoring frontline workers.
OSSTF Teachers and Education Workers have spent literally hundreds of thousands of hours planning, re-planning, preparing, re-preparing, and then starting all over again as the TDSB’s constant changes to program delivery models, inability to provide timetables in a timely manner, and other organizational miss-steps resulted in jerking them from one assignment to the next. We too have Members who answered the call to support school opening in August. We too have Members who are owed lieu days from the 2019-2020 school year.
We also have an outrageous number of members whose class size workload protections are being violated at Virtual School due to careless and irresponsible Board planning.
We still have members awaiting recall from 2018-19 whom the Board ignores as vacancies arise, citing budgetary concerns.
This ill-considered compensation of one group of your so-called ‘team’ is divisive and completely undermines whatever tiny bit of morale might have been left among OSSTF Toronto Members.
I urge you to repair the damage you have caused to the relationship between yourselves and your Teacher and Education Worker employees, and to show the same spirit of munificence to them as you do to their managers, since administrators’ accomplishments are of course meaningless without the tireless work of OSSTF members.
Leslie Wolfe (she/her), President OSSTF Toronto Teachers
Sent on behalf of Interim Associate Director Andrew Gold, Interim Associate Director Karen Falconer and Associate Director Manon Gardner
Good morning Principals and Vice-Principals,
As we complete the final week of October, in some ways it is hard to believe we are finishing the second month of school. So much work has been accomplished by our school leaders to reopen our schools. On behalf of our students, their families and our staff – thank you for all that you have done to get our schools to this place. We know that other challenges await us and we want to take a moment to pause and look back on all that has been accomplished.
The terms and conditions for Principals and Vice-Principals include the following:
A Principal/Vice-Principal will perform the following in a professional manner:
(i) the duties of a principal specified in any Act, regulation or ministerial guideline;
(ii) the duties and orders assigned by the Board and its designate(s);
(iii) ensuring that his/her school is closed at the end of the school year in accordance with the direction of the School Superintendent; and
(iv) ensuring that his/her school is prepared for full operation by the first day of school in accordance with the direction of the School Superintendent.
Given the unprecedented demands of this year’s school opening, it has been decided that all Principals and Vice-Principals will receive additional compensation associated with the requirements for school opening this Fall. All Principals will receive 5 days of remuneration at the Secondary Principal Continuing Education rate (top step) and all Vice-Principals will receive 5 days of remuneration at the Secondary Vice-Principal Continuing Education rate (top step).
Such pay will be processed as quickly as possible and we expect it to be included on the December 10, 2020 pay.
Further, we recognize the ability to take lieu days in the 2019-2020 school year were not possible for many of our school leaders. In the early part of the year we had labour sanctions and then remote learning from March Break until the end of the year. In addition to the compensation shared above, all Principals and Vice-Principals who were a Principal or Vice-Principal last year will receive additional lieu days in 2020-2021 as follows:
Days Taken in 2019-20 Additional Lieu Days for 2020-21
0-2 days 2 (for a total of 7)
3-4 days 1 (for a total of 6)
5 days 0 (for a total of 5)
With appreciation,
Andrew, Karen and Manon