No report cards as scheduled, Toronto board tells elementary school parents

Fall progress reports won’t go out as planned in November, the Toronto District School Board notified parents of elementary students in an email blast sent out Friday.

Scheduled for distribution any time between Nov. 6 and 12, the board made the announcement because of the ongoing job action by the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario and support staff. It is unclear if the fall reports will be delayed, or axed.

“Continued withdrawal of services by ETFO and CUPE is having an impact on the normal operations of our schools. It is simply not possible for elementary principals to perform the many duties and tasks that nearly 11,000 elementary teachers and 15,000 CUPE support staff are not doing during this labour action,” says the letter from director of education Donna Quan and chair Robin Pilkey.

“As ETFO has directed its members to not prepare report card comments or complete or package progress reports, we are unable to issue kindergarten to Grade 8 elementary progress report cards between November 6 and 12, as previously scheduled. Should a tentative agreement be reached with ETFO, we will revisit the situation.”

Other Ontario boards have directly warned if the labour dispute drags on they may just cancel them. Should the fall progress report be axed, students’ next report home won’t be until February — meaning they’ll have gone an entire year without a full report because the reports last June were also comment-free.

Other Greater Toronto area boards have yet to make a decision on the fall reports.

Sam Hammond, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, has told the Star that while report cards are including it the union’s job action, the situation “can be avoided” if a tentative deal is reached with the government and school boards. Talks have now resumed.

Last June, amid public outcry, Ontario boards decided to provide marks-only summaries because of ETFO’s job action.

The current work-to-rule by ETFO again bans teachers from writing comments. They will, however, provide the “ratings” for the fall reports, which include learning skills and work habits (which range from E for excellent to N for needs improvement), as well as checkmarks for each subject area indicating whether a child is progressing very well, well or with difficulty.

Toronto mother Esther Grossman said while she’d like to get a report for her children in Grades 5 and 8 at Cedarvale Public School, “that’s just the tip of the iceberg” of the impact of the labour upheaval.

“We’re not able to fundraise — we had to cancel the family movie night that raises money for our eco-school program — and tons of volunteers are handing out and collecting all the permission forms for activities like Mad Science (an enrichment program),” said Grossman, who is the school council chair. “But not all schools have a lot of volunteers.”

Furthermore, principals are being stretched thin picking up duties left undone by teachers and support staff on work-to-rule, Grossman said, and without teachers to fill in for them, principals can’t leave the school for meetings about important issues like possible school closings.

“But we’re still getting amazing comments from teachers on our kids’ work, so we know how they’re doing. Report card comments are just cut-and-paste, anyway.”

Meanwhile, Toronto high school teachers are beginning job action Nov. 4 that is largely administrative to express their frustration with local talks.

President Doug Jolliffe said extracurriculars won’t be affected and the union is trying to impact kids and parents “as little as possible.”