The Upper Canada District School Board (UCDSB) declared over 100 high school teachers redundant. The announcement was made yesterday. The potential layoffs are a direct result of the province’s plan to increase class sizes from a ratio of 22:1 to 28:1, according to the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF).
Danny Thomas, Teacher Bargaining Unit President for District 26, says this is a devastating number of redundant teachers within the board. He says that despite government claims that declarations of redundancy are routine for school boards, there is nothing routine about the alarming number of teachers declared redundant yesterday. Thomas says this is not business as usual.
He says thanks to the Ford government’s cuts, student learning will suffer and class sizes will balloon. Thomas says students will get less individual attention and the availability of courses will be impacted.
A call has been put in to the OSSTF and UCDSB for more information about the announcement and how it will affect local schools. The article will be updated as more details become available.