It's Never Just About The Money!

It's Never Just About The Money!

Yesterday, I received a notice in the mail from the Ontario Teachers' Superannuation Fund that indicated our pension had increased for 2020 by 2%.  That is because it is fully indexed and is raised every year to keep up with the cost of living increase.  Interestingly enough, in the evening, on the CBC's The National there was a piece about the one day strikes by the teachers of Ontario and how families were coping with the kids being home for a day, possibly more down the road.  The parents all expressed support for the teachers but Premier Doug Ford suggested that if they just offered the teachers 1% they'd call the strikes off.  I have sat on various negotations teams for teachers over the years, and needless to say, the proposed contract changes always include salary increases but they also always include those things that would make life not just better for teachers but for students as well.  Few look at keeping teachers happy and working to control their work lives so that they benefit their students as important because they do not accept the difficulties and stresses teachers confront on a daily basis in their classrooms.  Increasingly, teachers are being asked to should more and more responsibilities and deal with students who often deal with more and more dysfunction and then to be told their value to society is not as important as ensuring they are earning a decent wage and being allowed to keep up with inflation is ludicrous.  Of course, there are those who will argue that we get 12 weeks a year of vacation and that is undeniable.  But how many parents truly do not understand what it is like to deal with their own children just those few hours when they are not in school and express pleasure when the house is quiet.  Imagine dealing with 24 or 25 and being told you need to deal with more now.  Everyone who thinks about it understands the pull of several children of different ages all need a piece of mommy or daddy and can't imagine any more than two or three at a time. But we have whole classes and we increasingly understand the need to deal with them as individuals, not bodies in rows in classrooms.  That is as it should be for sure and when it comes time to negotiate new contracts, naturally they try to maximize the benefits to the jobs but not out of greed, but because fewer students means more one-on-one time and better learning situations for kids. More money in schools means more resources and not just fixed but Human Resources to help the students who don't easily learn on their own or come to school with multiple learning problems, but physical a
AND emotional.  We fight always for improvements not just for ourselves so that our place in society is never undermined but also for our schools so that everyone's children get the benefit of the best education possible at the expense of the public.  Doug Ford only shows his contempt for the teachers in Ontario schools now by saying that all that is required is the 1% (less than we get as retired teachers by 50%) and even that the province cannot afford.  The province can afford that 1% raise if it did  not have to pay compensation for the ending of the wind energy projects contracted for by the last Liberal government.  So....where are the priorities of the leadership of the Province?