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Perhaps they would be better persuaded by the analysis of a recently-retired principal, a person with 15 years of experience running schools, one whose last assignment was to helm a large and successful elementary school. She was kind enough to write to describe her own experiences.

“I can tell you from first-hand experience that the most crippling legislation for education was Regulation 274 dealing with seniority and hiring practices. In situation after situation, choosing a teacher from the five most senior and ‘qualified’ teachers who applied for a position did not mean you were getting the best person for that classroom. There was, in most cases, a good reason that supply teachers were on a seniority list for a goodly amount of time, and not hired to a permanent position.”

The mechanics of the cumbersome, union-driven system don’t work well, either.

I fear that once this strike is settled, principals will once again be provided with a new and more limiting job description

“Those same five teachers would apply to multiple positions in other schools and once hired by one school, we would have to start the same process over again, waiting the requisite amount of time while the positions were posted and re-interviewing once again. This could take up to a month to get a teacher into a classroom.

“During this time we would have had daily and weekly supply teachers in those classrooms and of course, parents were furious with the lack of personnel consistency, the falling behind in curriculum and the ever-so-important relationships that were notbeing formed in their child’s classroom.”