Education Minister Liz Sandals says teachers frustrated with the state of contract negotiations could be locked out, but only as a last resort.

“The thing about locking out teachers is you also lock out children and school boards and the government, we are really committed to trying to keep the kids in the classroom,” Sandals said Monday.

“We don’t want to go there if we can possibly avoid it.”

She singled out the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario — which recently told its 76,000 members not to input report card data — for being a holdout from bargaining.

“We’ve got a number of teaching and non-teaching unions that we’re continuing to talk to,” she said on the way into a cabinet meeting at Queen’s Park.

“It’s obvious that ETFO is not at the table, nor has it been. . . ETFO has been continuously missing.”

While Catholic and French teacher unions continue to take part in central bargaining talks negotiating items like class size and salary, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation is not, and says it has no upcoming bargaining dates.

ETFO president Sam Hammond has said his union will return to the table only if the province and school boards remove “offensive” proposals, such as having principals control teachers’ prep time and removing “class size language” from contracts.

On Monday, Sandals also confirmed figures from the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association that ETFO’s demands — including wage made in writing and verbally — would cost $3.2 billion.

The school boards’ association said ETFO is seeking a three per cent raise each year for three years, plus cost-of-living increases.

“The total cost of their proposal is well in excess of $3 billion,” Sandals said, warning there is no money in the provincial budget for teacher wage hikes unless the unions offset the costs by giving something else up.

Sandals acknowledged the push to eliminate the provincial deficit, at $8.5 billion this year, makes for a “difficult negotiating environment.”

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“We’ve got a long way to go before September . . . we are totally committed to being at the table, we are willing to be there over the summer, if somebody doesn’t want to be there the explanation is up to them,” she added in a reference to the elementary teachers’ union.

“We have continued to negotiate with those parties that are willing … We are making progress. It is slow, it is difficult, we always said it would be difficult.”