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Canada  

N.S. faces school closures

Nova Scotia's education minister expects public schools to be closed for up to a week starting Monday, depending on the passage of a bill that would impose a contract on the union representing 9,300 educators in the province.

Karen Casey said Sunday that she recognizes the school closures are an "inconvenience" but concerns for students' safety have to take precedence, given what she says are the risks posed by the Nova Scotia Teachers Union's work-to-rule job action.

"There was no superintendent in this province who could say to us, 'We can guarantee that the child will be safe,'" said Casey. "I knew that they were nervous, I was nervous. We had to make a decision that would protect students."

Casey announced the school closures on Saturday, sending parents scrambling to find childcare with less than 48 hours notice. She compared the situation to a "storm day," suggesting school boards provide little more than a few hours notice when the roads are deemed unsafe for travel.

Parents received "as much notice as could possibly be given," Casey said in an interview, after the provincial government reviewed the risk assessments of eight superintendents regarding the job action proposed by the NSTU.

After failed contract negotiations with the provincial government, the NSTU directed its members to do the minimum amount of work required under the current agreement, including arriving at school 20 minutes before classes begin and leaving 20 minutes after they end.

Casey said Saturday that these directives would "put our students in an unsafe environment," citing concerns about students being stranded in schoolyards, unsupervised in classrooms and children with special needs arriving on buses and getting to class without teacher assistance.

NSTU President Liette Doucet said in a statement Saturday that if the provincial government were concerned about students' safety, it would have let students go to school where teachers would have been ready to teach.

"With this step, our government is showing that it will do anything except negotiate with teachers," said Doucet. "Instead of negotiating with teachers in good faith, this government has decided to take away their collective rights and impose a contract ... one that doesn't address the core problems with our education system."

Nova Scotia's House of Assembly is set reconvene Monday to consider legislation that would extend the tentative agreement reached by the province and the teachers union in September through to July 2019. If passed, the legislation would make job action illegal until the contract expires.



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