The provincial government will spend $20 million a year to ensure hundreds of support staff who were laid off last month return to Ontario schools — and another $58 million annually to help create more support for special education students.The tentative deal reached Sunday night between the province, school boards and 55,000 school support staff represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees — who include educational assistants, early childhood educators, custodians and office staff — means the Toronto District School Board will be able to rehire dozens of workers who lost their jobs because of budget cuts. For some, the new contract — and the more than $230 million in additional funding — bodes well for ongoing negotiations with teacher unions.“I think (the CUPE deal) builds some momentum to drive positive deals for kids in this province,” Education Minister Stephen Lecce said in a telephone interview Monday afternoon.“I am going to remain cautiously optimistic there is a pathway,” he added, if all sides are willing to negotiate in good faith.Teachers, however — especially at the secondary level — are fighting a tougher battle with the province over larger class sizes and the resulting loss of thousands of jobs over the next four years, plus an unprecedented move to mandate four online courses in high school with even bigger student-teacher ratios.Harvey Bischof, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, said CUPE’s deal could impact negotiations for his 60,000 members, who include teachers and some support staff.“There is cause for some cautious optimism inasmuch as the government seems to have recognized the value for the services that staff provide in our schools,” said Bischof. “It really depends on how they (the province) approach that teacher table … The government has launched very different kinds of attacks on different par ...
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