Ontario's public high school teachers, who are continuing their rotating strikes Wednesday, say they are fighting for the quality of education.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce says it's about higher teacher salaries.

They're both right.

And that's the problem.

The Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation has conducted rotating strikes on Wednesdays for most of the month of December, with another planned this week.

Any way you look at it, the issue is money.

The Ontario Conservative government, which says it's trying to fight a substantial deficit left by the previous Liberal government, is trying to raise the average class size in high school, which means fewer teachers would be needed. (Lecce originally wanted to raise class sizes to 28 students from 22, and has recently offered a compromise of 25.)

Another bone of contention is mandatory online courses in high school.

The government wants to make high school students take two online courses in order to graduate, saying that students need to master this new way of learning. Teachers object, in part because they see this rule as unfair because more privileged students learn better online than those from families who have less.

Then there are salaries.

The government wants to restrict pay increases for teachers to one per cent per year. Teachers are looking for something closer to inflation, like two per cent — and they point out (probably correctly) that the courts may find it illegal to pass a law limiting pay increases for unionized workers.

Teachers in Ontario are currently paid an average of just under $86,700 a year in Ontario, the second-highest pay rates in the country.

(By comparison, Ministry of Education statistics indicate the average salary is about $70,600 in Quebec and $73,300 in British Columbia. Alberta pays teachers the most, at an average of $89,100.)

Part of the conflict is because of a shift in political culture.

Almost always, right-wing political parties worry more about deficits than left-wing ones.

Thanks to the previous Liberal government, with Premier Dalton McGuinty even naming himself the "Education Premier," we have been bathed in a culture of expansive spending on education.

We got all-day kindergarten, small classes, and relatively generous assistance for children with special needs.

Now, with a different government that has different priorities, it stings for us to give some of that up.

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Here's the thing:

Many parents have been calm thus far, because the strikes haven't hit too hard. They were close to the holiday break, only on Wednesdays, and not everywhere at once.

January will start a different story.

With no progress made in talks, teachers will have no choice but to escalate their job actions.

Report cards, due at the end of January, won't contain comments that are valuable for parents to understand how their kids are doing. Grade 9 math testing may be compromised. Principals are already advising that it be cancelled this year because of the job actions.

Beneath their cheerful, supportive exterior, parents and the public are deeply concerned about the lack of progress in math.

In elementary schools both locally and across the province, math results continue to disappoint, despite large amounts of previous spending on math training and math teachers.

If parents, deprived of the chance to have their children assessed in this essential skill, start to get anxious, they will turn on both the teacher unions and the government.

The pay increase should never have been negotiated in the same basket as online courses and class sizes.

But they're all in there together, muddying the water for people trying to figure it out.

ldamato@therecord.com

Twitter: @DamatoRecord