The BCTF has announced that stage 1 job action will start on Wednesday, April 23, after the Easter weekend. There will be no immediate school closures or disruptions to students. This first stage is administrative in nature only. Teachers will continue to teach, write report cards, communicate with parents, and participate in their volunteer extracurricular activities.

During Stage 1 job action teachers will not:

• Undertake any mandated supervision of students outside of regularly scheduled classes, except as set out by an essential services order.
• Attend any meetings with management other than meetings of the worksite Joint Health and Safety Committee.
• Provide principals or administrators with any routine printed, written, or electronic communication.
• Receive any printed, written, or electronic communication from an administrator.
• Be at a worksite prior to one hour before commencement of instructional time and one hour after the end of instructional time, other than for pre-arranged voluntary activities.

What does this mean for parents?

At this point, there will still be communications with parents, such as report cards. Teachers will continue to carry out voluntary activities that have been previously arranged. Field trips ought not be affected, at this point.

One question mark that remains is what this will mean in SD57 for recess. During the last job action, this district cancelled recess, as providing supervision at recess took administrative staff time. Only a few districts in BC did so.

From the Vancouver Sun, September 2011:

Qualicum is one of several school districts that cancelled recess after teachers said they would not supervise students on the playground as part of their job action. The other districts are Central Okanagan, Vernon, North Okanagan-Shuswap and Prince George. Southeast Kootenay district also cancelled recess but trustees recently voted to reinstate it next month.

For more information, see the BCTF news releases: https://www.bctf.ca/NewsReleases.aspx

SD57 has also previously posted a communications strategy in the event of a strike: http://www.sd57.bc.ca/fileadmin/cao.sd57.bc.ca/District_Info/commstrat.pdf