… because the schools around Alta Vista and its neighbourhoods haven’t seen her since the 2010 election.

But here she is, shilling for the OCDSB Chair running for the NDP nomination in Ottawa Centre.

Whew. Folks have been worried.

(62)

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

… even if the teacher’s action tomorrow is declared illegal, do NOT reverse yesterday’s decision to close all elementary schools. And here is why:

• Student safety – if told to go to work as usual or face consequences, many teachers will NOT and there is no way to anticipate how many, where and in which grades. How can a school’s senior staff plan for this? They can’t. And student safety may be put at risk… not at all intentionally by the teachers, but as an indirect consequence of choosing to keep the schools open under unsure staffing levels. The TDSB is keeping their schools closed regardless of the outcome of today’s OLB decision:
  

  Meanwhile, the 474 elementary and junior-high schools run by the Toronto District School Board will be closed Friday even if the government is able to a prevent the walkout by teachers.

  Even if teachers are forced back to work, there is no way to know exactly how many staff members will be able to come to work, according to a TDSB spokeswoman.

  “We can’t ensure that there’s enough adult supervision at the school to make it a safe environment,” said Shari Schwartz-Maltz.

• I cannot picture a more poisoned workplace than an Ontario elementary school tomorrow if the teachers are forced to abandon their one-day strike action. Strong union supporters will clash with those who are lukewarm.  Many will be very angry and I don’t want my kids to walk into a hornet nest!
• Opening the schools will make an already bad situation even worse for some families. It is bad enough that little notice was given of this action and many parents were forced to scramble. But if families do not find out until 8 pm tonight (as we have been told by the OCDSB), then there be even MORE scrambling to contact alternate care providers. And what about those providers? How can they staff their operations with this uncertainty! I know that many parents are not as fortunate as my wife and I who can take (our quickly dwindling) annual leave to cover off things like these, but many are not as lucky.

Ya know, folks, in my life I have seldom seen such a sequence of utterly stupid decisions-making.  Both the Ontario government and the teachers unions have shown such awful judgement on each step of this trek into Stupidville! It truly boggles the mind. (54)

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

The Director of Education has just announced that all OCDSB elementary schools will be closed on Friday.

All Ottawa peeps in the English public system should plan accordingly. (39)

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

… Ottawa-Centre Dipper nomination.

Trustee Jennifer McKenzie has announced her intention to seek the nomination for the Ottawa-Centre NDP candidacy. Trustee McKenzie will continue in her role as trustee and in her capacity as Chair of the Board.

I commend her for stepping up, takes guts. Although I have to question the timing given that there is a major Accommodation Review happening in her Zone right now. The folks who elected her really need that involved presence during this review. I work with some of her constituents who have children in one of the schools in the review, and they are very concerned that they will be losing an important voice at the Board table.

Will she be able to adequately represent her constituents’ interests while in what will be a tough nomination fight?

I guess we’ll see.

  (38)

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

… the ONE day walkout by elementary teachers today.

Suck it up.

This is democracy in action, regardless of whether or not you believe that teachers (or anyone else for that matter) should have the right to strike. Under the current law, they DO have that right. This. Is. A. Fact. Look it up.

Go ahead, my conservative friends, knock that one down!

And it is only ONE day! I remember that back in 1982ish my brother having to move way from home to complete his Grade 13 because the West Parry Sound School Board teachers struck for MONTHS!

As I am typing this (oh, btw, I’m home with the kids today – and don’t begrudge the teachers one bit), I am listening to a Barrhaven mother being interviewed on CBC who is expressing her worry about her children having to be exposed to picket lines!

I’m serious! She is worried about her kids being exposed to democracy!

Of course, she is from Barrhaven… (50)

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

From the OCDSB site.

==================================================================================

ETFO Work To Rule Strategy

(426)

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

…on my bus this morning and on Twitter about schools needing to be closed today!

Listen up.

Legit reasons to close schools:

• Power outage
• Water outage
• Major snowstorm / freezing rain event that puts staff and / or students at risk of physical harm
• Earthquakes – big ones
• Invasion by aliens
• Invasion by the U.S. or other former superpower
• Locusts – big ones

Not a legit reason:

• Major storm 500 km away that may cause things to get a bit breezy in Ottawa

Sheesh!

Back in MY day, we walked to school in raging snowstorms with -55F temps! That’s FAHRENHEIT, KIDS! AND WE WORE NEWSPAPER ON OUR FEET CUZ WE COULDN’T AFFORD BOOTS!

Sheesh. Kids these day…

  (152)

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

… especially point “C”.

It won’t make a hill of beans of a difference, but the Board said what needed saying.

Thanks to @nancy_akehurst for the pic.

(76)

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

You might remember that I wrote about this last year. Now the Ottawa public school board has some results to talk about. And they are for sure talking about it.

The big takeaway for them is the diversity of the student population. Now, anyone can see this for themselves by following a school bus around (not that I have done this) and watching who gets on. It doesn’t take a genius, or a survey, to observe that.

In fact, this is perhaps a more accurate way to judge the extent of diversity of students on our schools than the survey. Why? Because, exactly as I predicted, the response rates turned out to be too low in order to arrive at conclusions about the whole student body; either at the Board or the school level.

The OCDSB admits that the rate was lower than they had wanted… under 50% for elementary schools and mid-sixties for our high schools. The reason why these low rates are problematic is that when one applies the conclusions to the population and then uses this as information upon which to make Board and school level decisions, they might be using flawed data.

Why? We don’t know who didn’t reply to the survey. The demographic characteristics of non responders might be quite different from those who filled in the questionnaire. In survey parlance, this is called non response bias.

There are ways to adjust for this bias but given that there are no baseline data that one can use to assess the effect that the bias may have had, these adjustments are not possible.

Now, the Board could do something about this and hire a qualified consultant to randomly select a number of schools that represent different areas of the City. Then go into the schools and observe the actual profile of the population; then compare these data to the data obtained through the survey instrument. Then adjustments could be made if required. This is also called data confrontation.

But unless they do this, or something line it, these results aren’t very useful. Indeed, using them may do more harm than good! (99)

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

Teachers in many of Ontario’s School Boards have heeded their union’s advice to take a “pause” from coaching or otherwise being involved in extracurricular activities, such as sports team, in protest of the Ontario government’s recent legislation imposing salary freezes, etc. And, as is always the case in any type of labour disruption in the education sector, the students are the ones who feel it the most.

So what to do?

The teachers are well within their rights to hold back these unpaid services. They are paid to deliver a provincially-mandated curriculum to the students and anything outside this is unpaid labour. So I can’t argue with their frustration over having bargaining rights taken away and their reaction. This is the only legal tool they have.

So if teachers are – at least temporarily – out of the picture, who picks up the slack?

Parents?

Maybe. But those parents who are active in the community and the likely suspects to step up and coach the Junior boys soccer team are already stretched for time. I know. I’m one of them. That is the case in my little corner of Ottawa and I suspect it the same elsewhere. There might be a bit of a community pool to draw from, but it would come nowhere near to filling the gap left by the teachers.

As well, there is the whole security issue around having parents lead these teams without some sort of oversight, as in police checks.

Trustee for zone 3, Donna Blackburn, said she has been inundated with phone calls from parents who were frustrated about the parameters of volunteering and the deadlines for getting involved.

Adams said all volunteer coaches and assistant coaches need to go through a process, including police checks.

“Our No. 1 priority is student safety,” Adams said.

The deadline for winter sports is Oct. 31, she said, and that the board will work with principals to get the information about volunteering out to parents and other interested members of the community.

So, for all practical purposes, parents and other members of the community might help, but only a bit.

A logical longterm solution might be to have the teachers play a supporting role only and hire professional coaches who could manage a few different sports. But that would cost money and neither the Boards nor the province have any dineros to spare these days… unless…. hmmm…

We DO have this wasteful and discriminatory duel education system in Ontario… I wonder if there could be adequate cost-savings realised by MERGING the public and seperate Boards? Hmmmm?

Of course we don’t know the extent of the cost savings because no government has had the balls to do an independent, unbiased analysis of our publicly funded education system. Even if the savings were only $20 or $30 million annually, that would hire a few hundred pro coaches at 60K a pop or so.

Just sayin’…

  (81)

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario