Boards may shut down high schools

Updated It’s day two of the job action by public high school teachers, and there’s talk tonight of closing schools.

So do parents need to worry about their child’s high school shutting its doors? The Hamilton Wentworth school board hasn’t been drawn into this teacher work to rule yet. The Halton and Niagara school boards have been affected. But they assure us there are no plans to close any of their schools.

As of yesterday, high school teachers in about 18 public boards across the province started a job action. They’re still teaching, but are refusing to do administrative duties like covering classes for absent teachers or supervising students outside class.

The Public School Boards Assocation says boards may have to close down high schools if there are safety concerns like a lack of supervision. But the Director of Education for the Halton board, David Eaule, says they don’t see the need to shut down any schools. “We’ll do this as long as we have to and we’ll make every attempt to keep our schools open for students.”

“If we couldn’t provide coverage for students in their classrooms, if we had a bunch of classes where the teacher was absent and we couldn’t hire supply teachers we would take a couple of measures before we could actually consider closing schools.”

Premier McGuinty is calling on teachers to withdraw their job action. “They are legally entitled to take a number of these actions, we understand that, and we have to respect that. But the (education) minister will monitor the situation just to ensure that student safety in particular is not being compromised.”

Education Minister Laurel Broten has left open the possibility of imposing the anti-strike provisions of its controversial legislation that’s at the centre of the government’s dispute with teachers. All it would take is a cabinet order to end any job action.

But again, both the Halton and Niagara boards say they can keep the schools open the way things are right now. And they say normal extracurricular activities are pretty much continuing as well. No word from the Hamilton-Wentworth board today, but high school teachers there haven’t started any job action yet, and possibly not until Monday.

Video: Al Sweeney reports: