The government could consider requiring teacher unions to specify the job action they will take, rather than just give five days notice of it, after this round of bargaining has wrapped up, says Education Minister Liz Sandals.

On Thursday, Sandals chastised the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, saying president Sam Hammond should not keep parents in the dark as to the union’s plans for Monday, when some 73,000 members across the province are to begin some form of strike action.

It is anticipated the action will be largely administrative — refusing to administer standardized tests and not filling in report cards — but Hammond isn’t confirming details until a press conference Friday afternoon.

“These are kids — if there is going to be a full withdrawal of services on Monday, the parents need to know so they can arrange alternative care,” she told reporters after being accused during question period of allowing teacher labour unrest to get out of control.

“So I really encourage Mr. Hammond to be fair to the parents, to be fair to the kids” and notify them immediately.

Provincial regulations stipulate that teacher unions must give at least five days notice about withdrawal of service, but it does not say that a union has to say what exactly it plans to do.

“We shouldn’t put parents through this uncertainty. We shouldn’t put children through this uncertainty because this is really a dispute amongst the adults,” Sandals said.

In a statement, Hammond said the union “has fulfilled its legal obligation to provide notice of legal strike action. We do not take strike action lightly and have been pushed into such action as a result of unrealistic and concession bargaining demands tabled by the Liberal government and the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association.

“The reality is that Minister Sandals and her negotiating team have had eight months at the bargaining table to negotiate in good faith and withdraw demands that would severely affect students’ learning conditions and teacher professionalism. They have failed to do so.”

Bargaining has been tough going this time around, with a new, two-tier system that has the provincial government, unions and school board associations negotiating costly items such as class size and salary. Talks between individual boards and union locals are on non-monetary issues such as grievance procedures or performance appraisals.

Three secondary school districts are on strike, affecting almost 70,000 students in Durham, Rainbow/Sudbury and Peel. The Durham teachers’ union and the public school board are to resume talks Friday, though the strike continues.

Paul Elliott, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, said Thursday that the school board association wants to remove class-size caps, which it says “threatens our students’ educational experience” by larger classes of up to 40 students.

The Ontario Public School Boards’ Association has said principals need some flexibility because even if a core class such as math can have only 25 teens but 28 are taking it, schools have to create two classes — forcing the cancellation of another class to afford the second math teacher.

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“It happens all the time — we’ve had to cancel tech classes at Oshawa Central Collegiate and G L Roberts Collegiate because of this,” school boards’ president Michael Barrett has said. “We’re not asking for classes of 40, but if you have flexibility you don’t have to lose the range of programming choices.”