Both school divisions are getting ready Thursday when Saskatchewan’s teachers will cease to operate extracurricular activities and before and after school supervision.
The Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation (STF) has been in contract negotiations with the province for ten months. In February, theachers voted 90.2 per cent in favour of taking job action.
Both the Saskatchewan Rivers School Division and Prince Albert Roman Catholic School Division are preparing.
“It’s provincial sanctions affecting all schools and it will impact primarily extracurricular activities. So anything that is after school that the teachers are involved in will be canceled like basketball and drama,” Saskatchewan Rivers director of education Robert Bratvold said.
Saskatchewan Rivers and the Roman Catholic Division will see extracurricular activities that require teacher supervision outside the school day cancelled starting Thursday and until further notice.
One sport directly affected will be basketball.
“Our expectation is that there is a Sask Rivers School Division staff member affiliated with the sports team,” Bratvold explained.
“All extracurricular activities will not be occurring. Which can include things like tutoring, canteen operations, anything that they would have been supporting as a student group with to run or to support. Extracurricular activities are not being supported at this time,” Roman Catholic Division director of education Lorel Trumier said.
According to Sask. River the upcoming Parent-Teacher Interviews will proceed as scheduled. School schedules of events, activities, classes, recesses, and noon-hours will continue as usual. School supervision for the time immediately before and after school will continue mostly as usual, but some schools may have necessary changes communicated by the Principal.
“In some schools there will be a message from the Principal saying that the school will remain locked until this time and it varies with school start times changes and it varies,” Bratvold explained.
“Therefore I think the biggest significance is that parents are really going to have to support our schools in that they are not at the school site prior to that time but after that,” Trumier said.
The Saskatchewan High School Athletics Association (SHSAA) is dealing with the issue around basketball playoffs and Hoopla. After a meeting on Monday evening the Executive Council of the SHSAA decided to have playoffs remain scheduled in hopes that the two sides can reach an agreement before on March 11 before 3:30 p.m.. However, if this does not occur ,the remaining basketball playoffs will be canceled due to lack of teacher involvement in the events, the loss of the qualification process and the constraints for schools’ preparations to act as host site.
