MANITOULIN – All students attending Rainbow District School Board (RDSB) elementary schools and Manitoulin Secondary School (MSS) will be back for a regular week of class this week (weather permitting) due to no strikes being part of Phase 6 of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) job action and the rotating strikes for the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF) bypassing Rainbow schools this round.
MSS students were off last Friday as a rotating OSSTF job action came to the district, which also resulted in the walk-outs of all elementary administration support staff who are represented by OSSTF.
In bargaining news, last week The Expositor shared that the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA) had returned to the negotiating table and also called off a planned one-day strike last week in what it called a show of good faith.
Talks broke down between the union and the province so it has planned a strike for tomorrow, Thursday, March 5.
Over this past weekend, OSSTF announced it would be having an informal exploratory meeting with the province Sunday evening to see if negotiation talks would resume. As of press time Monday, the results of the exploratory talks and their impacts on the rotating strikes were not yet known.
