As you may be aware, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) are currently in ongoing province-wide labour negotiations. In the WRDSB, OSSTF represents secondary school teachers as well as a number of other education workers including school secretaries and custodial and maintenance staff that work in both our elementary and secondary schools, and at the Education Centre.

As a result of ongoing job action, we may encounter situations where we are unable to ensure adequate staffing to support the community use of schools. This includes our ability to supervise and schedule overtime for custodians and provide necessary back-up coverage. This could result in community groups being unable to access our school facilities, as staff will not be on-site to ensure doors are open, as well as potential health, safety, and security risks.

Therefore, weekday and weekend community use of schools in our school sites will be cancelled starting on February 15, 2020 for 7 calendar days. The cancellations will be reassessed February 14, 2020 to take effect February 22, 2020 for another 7 calendar days. Each week the impact of labour sanctions will be assessed in a similar fashion. Potential to secure permits for future weekdays and weekends will be placed on hold.

If user groups wish to cancel their permits, please reach out to the Community Use of Schools Department to do so.

The following programs will continue to operate unless communicated otherwise:

  • International Languages operated through WRDSB Continuing Education only
  • School-based and WRDSB extra-curricular programs
  • Extended Day and Youth Development programs operated by WRDSB and/or licensed childcare providers
  • Early ON centres (modified hours of 7:00 am – 6:00 pm, Monday to Friday, excluding Statutory Holidays )
  • Childcare centres co-located in schools

We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause to our community users.

As labour negotiations continue, updates may be more frequent and we will continue to do our best to keep you informed as quickly as possible.

For information and updates please refer to:

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