Zach Churchill: our schools will open 100 per cent… unless they don’t

It’s easy to understand why the government’s school-opening plan is still more hope than certainty. What’s less easy to understand — or forgive — is its business-as-usual secrecy, which has created unnecessary anxiety among students, parents, teachers and business. It’s hard not to sympathize with those charged with deciding whether and how to re-start the […]

Teachers: light at the end of the tunnel? What tunnel?

It’s been a full week since the Liberal caucus revolt Stephen McNeil insists never happened; since Education Minister Karen Casey’s 180-degree, we-must-close-all-the-schools-right-now-to-protect-student-safety/no-we-will-reopen-all-the-schools-tomorrow-to-protect-our-government’s future; since the government called its special session of the House of Assembly to pass legislation to impose a rejected contract on the province’s 9,300 teachers, then sent the MLAs home with nothing […]

Stephen McNeil’s best laid plans…

Last week, Nova Scotia’s 9,000 teachers decisively rejected a tentative contract with the provincial government. With their vote, the teachers instantly scuppered Stephen McNeil’s carefully crafted strategy to bring public sector unions to heel before introducing a see-we-did-it balanced budget in advance of the next provincial election. McNeil had begun strategically with the teachers, traditionally […]

Dress codes: days of future past

When I was in high school — in the days when tablets were not computers but the stone on which the Ten Commandments were etched, and before the discovery of trans, either fat or gender — we had a dress code. Boys were required to wear shirts buttoned to the collars, ties tied tight. No […]