TORONTO -- Everyone from parents to the premier is frustrated by the fact there's still no tentative contract agreement with the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne said Thursday.
"I am frustrated; I absolutely am frustrated," Wynne said. "There's a lot of frustration on the part of boards. There's frustration on the part of parents, and certainly I feel frustrated that we haven't been able to get an agreement."
The teachers' union blasted the Ontario Public School Boards Association for releasing a statement Wednesday saying that negotiations with ETFO had stalled on the issues of sick leave and benefits. ETFO called the boards' statement "a hostile move" that undermined any good will and progress made at the bargaining table.
"This media stunt is yet another example of bad faith bargaining," union president Sam Hammond said in a statement.
"ETFO is now going to have to re-evaluate how to proceed."
Hammond did not mention one-day rotating strikes at schools, which ETFO had warned could start this month if there was no progress made in negotiations.
Wynne said the school boards were just trying to keep parents informed.
"Parents don't know why there isn't a resolution to this, and out of the frustration that the boards were feeling, they wanted to put information into the public realm that demonstrated that there has been movement," she said.
The premier said the good news in the school boards' statement was that there's only the two issues left for the elementary teachers' negotiations.
"There's a lot of agreement on a lot of issues that initially were thought to be the contentious issues that would have blocked an agreement," she said. "Wow, there's an opportunity here. There are only a couple of issues that are unresolved."
The union had been waiting for the call to reconsider the latest offer and return to the bargaining table, but instead the school boards "used the media to sidestep the negotiations," said Hammond.
"In decades of bargaining in the education sector, I have never seen such flagrant disrespect displayed for the bargaining process and for our members."
The Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation and the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association already ratified contracts that contained raises of 1.5 per cent plus another one-per-cent bonus. The union representing teachers in francophone schools has also reached a tentative agreement.
The government has said any deal with ETFO must reflect essentially the same parameters as the other teachers' contracts.
The province and boards are still in negotiations with CUPE and other unions representing school support staff, who are working to rule in many cases. Halls are getting messy because garbage isn't always being cleaned up, and front doors of some schools are unlocked because office staff won't answer the buzzer system.
