Assiniboia welcomes Weyburn Red Wings with open arms during ammonia shutdown
47m ago
Billets were found for all Red Wings players in just four hours.
With the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation and the provincial government announcing plans to get back to the bargaining table next week, the STF has said it will lift sanctions that are currently in place.
On Monday, teachers started working to rule, meaning they were doing their jobs but weren’t providing volunteer services like lunch-hour supervision or extracurriculars.
The work-to-rule sanction is being removed at 11:59 p.m. Friday and schools will return to their normal schedules Monday.
Dayce Derkatch is a Grade 11 student and hockey player at Martin Collegiate. For him, the end of sanctions is a relief since they cut into ice times.
“When you come to school and you know that there’s a sanction and you’re not going to be able to go to the rink and skate and you just have to sit here and do homework, that’s not as fun for sure,” he said.
Derkatch said the sanctions initially cut into ice times on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which prevented students at Martin’s sports academy from going to the rink.
However, Derkatch said they were eventually able to adapt in spite of shorter workouts.
“It’s awesome,” he said. “I like the shortened days (instituted by Regina Public Schools due to the sanctions), but now that we get the full hour workout and the full skating time, it’s really going to help the improvement of our game — especially going into the off-season when we can start to lift heavy and stuff. It’ll be good.”
Martin Collegiate in Regina. (980 CJME file photo)
The teachers have been without a contract since August. Talks between the sides have been stalled since mid-February, when negotiations broke down — a turn of events that had each side blaming the other.
The teachers started levying sanctions against the government in January, with job action including rotating one-day strikes and the withdrawal of voluntary support for lunch-hour supervision and extracurriculars.
The sanctions have caused issues for both parents and students, including the cancellation of major events like the Hoopla tournament, with the provincial high school basketball championships being reduced to a one-day event.
Lucas Geisler, a Grade 12 student in Martin’s baseball program, said the sanctions have affected his team’s travel time, but it hasn’t been a major adjustment.
“I wouldn’t say it’s frustrating, but sometimes when you don’t get your full time, it’s a little bit of a disappointment but not really (frustrating),” he said.
“We still get almost close to (the full time); you get like 10 minutes less so (that’s) just a little bit of travel time. (You) just make sure you’ve got to be a little quicker when you’re changing out and stuff.”
Grade 12 student Hannah Skiba is also enthusiastic about the removal of sanctions. Skiba trains as a softball player roughly two hours a day on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
“When we’re in school for weight room and gym and stuff, it’s fine, but we wish we would have a little bit longer because we do pay to be here and we love being around each other,” she said.
“I can understand why the teachers’ sanction is going on, but we just wish that it would just be a little more equal because we want our time. That’s all.”
Skiba said it’s promising for things to return to normal.
“I’m excited because we get our times back,” she said. “We get our training (and) we get our weight rooms back (and) our proper times back,” she said.
“With the sanctions lifted, we also get our opportunities back. In May we’re supposed to go (Portage la Prairie) for a tournament. Hopefully that doesn’t cancel because that’s our favourite tournament of the year.
“That’s when we really get to show off our skill. All that time and effort that we get to put in, we show it off there.”
— With files from 980 CJME’s Gillian Massie