Union says parents don't have confidence in back-to-school plan, even as TDSB survey suggests majority still opting for in-class learning

The head of a union representing approximately 76,000 elementary school workers says that he has heard from many parents who have reluctantly decided to send their children back to school simply because they don’t have an option.

On Wednesday night the Toronto District Board released the result of a registration survey which indicated that 70 per cent of the parents of elementary school students plan to send their children back to the classroom this month while 30 per cent intend to have their children take part in virtual leaning instead. Among secondary school parents, 79 per cent said that their children would attend classes in person while 21 per cent said that they would learn remotely.

Both numbers were lower than the TDSB’s own internal projections, which were based on the expectation that 80 per cent of students would return to the classroom.

Speaking with reporters at a press conference alongside NDP Leader Andrea Horwath on Thursday, Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario President Sam Hammond said that he continues to be concerned about the lack of physical distancing in classrooms and believes parents are too.

He said that the survey just underscores the fact that most of them don’t actually have a choice when it comes to sending their children back to school in the coming weeks.

“I would suggest to you that many of those parents don’t have an option. They don’t have an option to stay home when they need to be at work,” he said. “You would have a higher rate I think if parents actually had confidence in the plan, if you want to call it that, and we just don’t’ see that.”

Hammond said that he has personally heard from “many, many parents” who are concerned about the close quarters that their children will be confined to when they return to class amid a global pandemic but believes that most of them have “no option.”

He said that while experts have spoken of a need to lower class sizes across the board, the province has largely failed to do that. School buses, he said, will also continue to “operate at capacity in some cases with two or three students per seat.”

“I am just not sure that you can make a blanket statement that in Toronto 70 per cent of parents are coming back and comfortable,” he said. “I absolutely don’t agree with that and I think there is a lot more going on.”

Union says there will be minimal physical distancing in classrooms

The Ford government has provided school boards with $100 million in funding to hire new teachers and has also allowed them to dip into their reserve funds.

Nonetheless many boards, including the TDSB, have still warned that it will be impossible to guarantee at least two metres of physical distancing between students this fall.

That has lead Ontario’s four education unions, including ETFO, to file complaints with the labour relations board over what they say is the province’s failure to take “every reasonable precaution” to protect their members.

On Thursday, Hammond said that his members have been mostly unable to set up their classrooms “with the two metres physical distancing that is required everywhere else in every other establishment” and in some cases student desks might only be separated by 35 centimetres.

He said that as a result many teachers are feeling “anxious” and may even be forced to exercise their right to refuse unsafe work.

“It is not something that can be done collectively. It is very specific to individual situations but our members have that right and will in their professional judgement exercise that right if they feel the need to do that,” he said.

Ford has criticized union leaders

Ford has claimed that his government has done “everything” possible to ensure the safe resumption of in-person classes and that the province’s education unions “just want to fight.”

He even even singled out Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation President Harvey Bischof on Wednesday, telling reporters that he would rather listen to epidemiologists than “some guy with a degree in English literature who thinks he is a doctor.

“I just want to work with them. This isn’t the time to argue or disagree or fight with someone,” the premier said during his daily COVID-19 briefing on Thursday afternoon. “I am not saying that there won’t be bumps. There will be bumps in the road as sure as I am standing here but I have confidence in the system, the teachers, the principals and the school board. Everyone is pulling in the same direction.”

While Ford has, at times, accused the unions of being unreasonable leaders like Hammond and Bischof have contended that they just want their members to have the same protections as other workers, mainly two metres of physical distancing.

Speaking with CP24 earlier on Thursday, OSSTF Toronto President Leslie Wolfe said that student and parents have been forced to conduct a “risk benefit analysis based on what we know about COVID and what we know about how schools are set up” and thousands of them have decided to stay home.

“It is something that should not have to happen,” she said. “When the Ford government put their school opening plans into place the unions were very clear that unless the Ford government wanted chaos in publicly-funded education they needed to step up and fund enough teaching and education support staff so that classes could be kept small to accomplish physical distancing while at the same time having everybody in-person in school.”