A tentative deal between elementary teachers and the provincial government may be the final step to labour peace in schools, but it comes too late to save traditional graduation dances or end-of-year concerts for a handful of Toronto public schools.

While track-and-field competitions went ahead in full force across the city, and activities like field trips and after-school gardening clubs have resumed at most schools, there are a few pockets where labour turmoil still exists.

And that’s led to confusion and tense relations between principals, staff and parents, who wonder why their schools continue to be targeted.

Sam Hammond, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, said some teachers have told the union they’ll never go back to extracurriculars “because of how we were treated by the government. And some have been frustrated and angered that the vast majority of parents don’t seem to recognize that these are things they do in their free time.”

But others have been holding off returning to after-school programs “until they see the end result of this agreement,” he said, “so they may return.”

The government and elementary union announced a tentative agreement Thursday morning. Teachers are to vote electronically on the deal until June 22, just days before the end of the school year.

For some teachers, the continued extracurricular boycott is in response to the threat of discipline over bare-bones report cards they wrote last fall, despite a warning from the Toronto District School Board that one-sentence evaluations weren’t acceptable.

Annie Kidder, of research and advocacy group People for Education, said she has a “deeper concern about the lasting damaged relationships in some schools” where principals chose to reprimand teachers for not having filled in the usual number of comments.

“There has definitely been a lot of fallout in those schools, so those (hard) feelings continue,” said Kidder.

Those hard feelings mean that graduation ceremonies and dances have been affected, with teachers not taking part or by being scheduled during school hours so that teachers will attend.

At one Toronto school, teachers refused to collect money for a graduation boat cruise that is scheduled for the afternoon a day after the grad ceremony — a schedule inconvenient to students but that ensured staff took part.

So sensitive is the situation, parents who contacted the Star asked that neither they nor their school be identified for fear teachers might pull the plug on what little has been salvaged for the end of the school year.

“There is a tense mood between parents and teachers,” said one parent, who noted that end-of-year music concerts have been cancelled at her children’s school.

“We’re frustrated because there’s no communication; we don’t know what the issues are, and our hands are tied, we can’t do anything. Our kids are caught in the middle and don’t have any (extracurriculars).”

“As far as we’ve been told, next year should be normal,” said another. “But we don’t know that yet. Some teachers are saying ‘I highly doubt that,’ and others say ‘I hope so.’ ”

However, Michael Barrett, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, said while the year has been frustrating for everyone, the tentative deal with the elementary teachers does bode well for the fall.

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“It bodes well for a return to normalcy in schools,” he added. “Then we’ll have a year of labour peace before we start labour negotiations again.”