Ontario’s public secondary teachers will begin job action starting July 20 — meaning no extracurricular activities this fall unless a settlement is reached with the province and school boards.

In a memo sent Tuesday to the deputy minister of education, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation gave notice “that our teacher, occasional teacher and support staff members will commence strike actions in respect of bargaining issues” as of Monday.

The union had warned last month that after-school clubs and sports would be the first thing to go.

In a previous confidential bargaining bulletin sent out mid-June, obtained by the Star, the union also said “additional central strike actions will be taken and we will communicate the full extent and timing of those actions to you at the appropriate time.”

All of Ontario’s teachers — public, Catholic, French — have been without a contract since last summer and all are expected to be in a strike position by the fall with warnings of a rocky start to the school year that could include rotating strikes.

Elementary, secondary and Catholic teachers have all walked away from provincial-level talks with the Ministry of Education and public school boards, where big issues like salary and class size are negotiated. They’ve said they won’t return until proposals they say include cuts and concessions are withdrawn.

No deals have been hammered out with local boards either under the province’s new two-tiered bargaining system.

Michael Barrett, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, said the move by the high school teachers’ union is “no surprise, it’s just another step in the process of ramping up negotiations.”

He said talks will be scheduled with a conciliator in the coming weeks.

As for the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, “we are working with them to try and get dates. They haven’t applied for conciliation, but we are trying to get some (bargaining) dates.”

However, if the union continues to demand that the boards’ proposal be removed from the table, talks won’t happen, he added.

“Negotiations are about sitting at a table — give and take,” he said. “Having to take all our demands off the table is not an acceptable process, no more than we would demand they take their (proposals) off the table as well.”