TVDSB May Close Schools Next Week

Wednesday, 2 October 2019 14:25

A decision has not been made yet, however the option of closing schools next week is very much on the table for the Thames Valley District School Board. Parents are being told to find alternative childcare arrangements.

UPDATE: Thames Valley District School Board is determining the impact of strike action on school operations. Unless progress is made at the central/provincial bargaining table, a decision around school closures will be made by Friday, October 4 at 11:00am.

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The Thames Valley District School Board has told parents to start looking for alternative child care next week.

They have not made a decision yet, as to whether or not they will be closing down the schools. CUPE announced this morning that 55,000 educational workers will be going on strike as of Monday, if a new deal is not reached.

Associate Director at the TVDSB Jeff Pratt says they are currently analyzing the situation.

"We definitely wanted parents to know that we are serious in terms of having them consider alternative arrangements for child care as early as next week. We cannot commit to keeping our facilities open at this point in time, but we will certainly identify and communicate as soon as possible, in the event that we will have to close down schools."

Pratt says their main concern in keeping the schools open is safety.

"As you can imagine, these front line employee's offer critical services to our students and during the time of work to rule, safety is our number one priority. So safe arrival programs, that school secretaries do, wouldn't be available, our early childhood educators who work with our kindergarten students would not be available, educational assistants that support all our students with special needs would not be available and we would not have any cleaning services within our facilities, which certainly would provide some health and safety concerns. So there is many things that we are considering and have to take into consideration before we have to make the ultimate call."

A decision to close the schools on Monday has not been made officially at this time, but it is certainly on the table for discussion. Pratt says they hope that a deal can be made soon.

"The best case scenario is that, they have a deal and a collective agreement on both sides, so that school can operate as business as usual next week but if that does not happen, we certainly have to plan for that."

CUPE made the strike announcement this morning. We will continue to have updates on this developing story every day and Pratt says as soon as a decision has been made to either keep the schools open, or close them, they will make it public and available to everyone.