ELEMENTARY TEACHERS’ FEDERATION OF ONTARIO

REPORT TO THE 2015 ANNUAL MEETING

Advancing and Protecting Our Union, Our Values and Our Profession

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that future Women’s programs meet the over-
arching goals, the stated vision of ETFO and the 
expressed needs of the membership.

PD/L Program Review

The Professional Development/Learning (PD/L) 
service area continues to seek member input in 
order to revise programs so that they can meet 
the diverse and changing needs of the member-
ship. Last summer, more than 2,000 members 
participating in Federation programs completed a 
survey that asked them to reflect on their experi-
ences in ETFO professional learning and to make 
suggestions on how PD/L can continue to meet 
their needs. The results were utilized to modify 
programs during the 2015-2016 budget process. 
A new survey will be conducted with participants 
who attend programs in summer of 2015. The sur-
vey will also be sent out to a sample of the general 
membership in order to gather feedback. 

Last year, respondents strongly agreed that ETFO 
programs are relevant to their teaching assignments 
and related to their teaching practice. Members 
ranked technology, curriculum and instruction, and 
classroom management as pertinent topics. As a 
result, more courses on technology and classroom 
management were included in Summer Academy 
2015. In the coming year, a new program will be 
developed and available for locals on inquiry in the 
classroom as it was the most requested topic.

Publications Review

Since 2014, a cross-service area team has exam-
ined ways to restructure and modernize how 
ETFO creates, distributes and promotes its exten-
sive output of resources, books and videos. This 
year, the review concentrated on how ETFO can 
publish documents and incorporate the ‘ever-
green’ cycle to ensure documents remain perti-

nent for members and do not go out of date. This 
is important as a number of new publications will 
be published in the coming months.

Along with updating the ETFO resource catalogue 
and refining the publications process, publica-
tions and communications have been designed 
with the colour palette used for the Federation’s 
Building Better Schools initiative to ensure a con-
sistent ETFO look.

Inflation Protection Further 

Restored for Retired Teachers

The Ontario Teachers’ Federation (OTF) and the 
Ontario government, which jointly sponsor the 
Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP), are using 
some of the $6.8 billion funding surplus reported 
in March to restore inflation increases. Some sur-
plus funds will also be reserved to help facilitate 
stability in contribution and benefit levels should 
a future funding valuation show a decline in 
assets or increase in pension costs.

This is the second consecutive year OTF and the 
government have allocated surplus funds to par-
tially restore inflation protection levels. 

Inflation protection for pension credit earned after 
2009 is increasing to 70% from 60% of the annual 
increase in the cost of living. Teachers who retired 
after 2009 will see this increase reflected in their 
pensions in January 2016. Members who retired 
before 2010 are unaffected because they receive 
full inflation protection. Members who are still 
working are not currently affected because infla-
tion increases are determined after retirement.