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Recess continues in SD51 despite teacher job action

Local schools will not see any changes to recess as of yet with Wednesday’s teacher job action.

Local schools will not see any changes to recess as of yet with Wednesday’s teacher job action.Teachers throughout the province are in stage one of job action, which limits supervision outside of regularly scheduled classes and contact with adminstrators.While some districts in the province have cancelled recess, School District 51 (SD51) principals and other administrators will fill in with supervision at elementary schools in Grand Forks and Christina Lake.“At this time in the district, recess had not been cancelled,” said Kevin Argue, SD51 superintendent. “It’s something we’ll continue to review but at this time we have not cancelled it. Principals are filling in for the teacher supervision in all our schools. Some of our excluded staff, staff that work out of the board office and are non-union, are filling in and supporting a place where the principal alone may not be able to fill in all the requirements for supervision in order to be a safe situation.”Argue himself was performing supervision at Perley Elementary in Grand Forks on Wednesday (April 23).He added that principals and other administration will be filling in for morning and after school supervision as needed.“Lunch-time there are no teachers doing supervision anyway so we don’t need to fill in there,” said Argue. Extracurricular activities such as sports are not affected by phase one job action. Field trips are also unaffected at this time, said Argue.“The other big thing that’s not happening right now is professional learning (such as) non-instructional days,” he said. “Any kind of direction of meeting that the staff would do such as a professional practice as a staff with the principal. The principal would still give the opportunity but the strike action would say that the teachers can’t come to something where the principal is at a meeting.”