The union representing Ontario’s high school teachers has reached a tentative deal with the province — the last of the education unions to do so.

The 60,000-member Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation announced the deal Monday morning, as well as a second agreement for the support staff it represents.

“These are extraordinary times,” OSSTF president Harvey Bischof said in a written statement. “When we began negotiations nearly a year ago, no one could have anticipated the situation we face today” with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the shuttering of all schools in the province.

While not providing specifics, Bischof told the Star in a phone interview that “in the end, not all of our concerns were addressed, but we recognize ... the current environment we are in and the need for students to have stability once this emergency is over.”

The federation represents full-time and occasional teachers, educational assistants, early childhood educators as well as school psychologists, speech-language pathologist and social workers.

A ratification vote will be held by the end of May, Bischof said.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce said the government’s “priority has always been to reach good deals with teachers’ and education workers’ unions, that advance the priorities of students and parents. That is exactly what we have done by reaching deals with every education union in this province.”

Cathy Abraham, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association said this final, central deal “will help bring stability to our system during what is obviously a rapidly evolving situation” and noted the negotiators “often worked late into the night and over many weekends to achieve these agreements.”

Details of the deal with the secondary school union were not immediately available, however it is widely expected that it will mirror those reached by the other teacher unions, with an average class size of 23 students, two mandatory online courses (with a liberal opt-out policy) as well as a one per cent wage increase in each year of the three-year deal.

Bischof noted the strong public support that led to the government mostly backtracking on larger class sizes — going from an average of 28 students to 23, which is still one student more than last year’s class sizes — as well as online learning, dropping the requirement from four mandatory credits to two.

Both changes were unpopular with the public, and especially with students, numerous polls showed.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, negotiations with the teachers’ unions had been difficult, with all of them engaged in work-to-rule campaigns and weekly strikes.

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News of the agreement came on the heels of a three-year deal recently ratified by the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, as well as tentative contracts reached recently by the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario and the AEFO, which represents the province’s French-board teachers.

The elementary and Catholic teachers’ union negotiated about $120 million in total to hire more special education teachers.

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