Educational system is on brink of collapse – call for sea change in how the system is funded
Mark says:
Good morning. We are Sherry Biscope, Steph Carrier, Jean Rajotte, and Mark Jackson, speaking on behalf of parents of our downtown TDSB ward.
Recently the Toronto Board of Education asked parents to comment on their proposed budgeting process. To a large degree it has been a farce and a waste of time because our trustees have decided essentially to acquiese to the demands of the provincial government for more cuts.
This will be the 12th year of budget cuts to toronto schools… Aside and apart from the serious financial issues – about $100 million short fall each year.
We are here as parents to reflect what parents in our community have told us – and we do not believe that we are alone – what Toronto is experiencing is being experienced in large municipalities across the province.
We are here to today to warn the province that we have an educational system in crisis and close collapse. This premier talks a lot about knowledge based jobs of the future about hi-tech jobs of the future and what do they do?
They cut budgets for textbooks and funding for computers. They cut teacher librarians and then wonder why children are losing interest in reading. They are demanding larger schools when we know that high school students already feel lost in the system and disengaged.
Since they have been in office, the Liberals have increasingly removed local decision making and flexibility in the budgeting process. More and more they are putting restrictive parameters on how money can be spent. Sherry in a moment will explain the terrible damage that can result from such policies.
We have an education system that is in accelerating decline and the province is oblivious to the crisis that is emerging.
Universal design and centralized decisionmaking are a recipe for failure. It assumes that Wawa Ontario has the same student profile and needs as Windsor, Ottawa or Toronto. The result is that the province ends up discriminating against large cities.
The time has come for the province to back off and let local school boards take control of their own destiny or face massive collapse of the system.
we are here today to demand a new approach to educational funding – an approach that recognizes the needs of individual communities across the province – an approach that sets provincial goals and standards but allows some flexibility in how individual boards meet those goals.
We are demanding that the premier and his education minister fund and manage public education, in a manner similar to the health system – with a funding envelope and designated priorities and targets.
Sherry will now say a few words
Sherry says:
The ongoing negativity of the current budget planning process is overwhelming.
The command and control approach of the province toward funding is now spilling over into planning and front line educational programming. its insensitivity to local circumstances is having devastating impacts.
I see before us if the province continues on this track — a dire future of the largest school board in Canada – the toronto district school board.
Since 2001-2002, Toronto has lost 33,000 students, 12 per cent of its students while the youth population in the City has grown by 20 per cent over the past few years. (Source: national post and Toronto Board of Health numbers).
Clearly students are de-selecting Toronto schools and choosing schools outside the city because we are not meeting their needs.
What we have here is a dying board. Our rate of attrition of 12% is more than twice the provincial average of 5%. The problem is evident across the Province but even more dramatically evident in Toronto.
Our schools are not meeting the needs of our student population. Let me give you a case in point – how ESL funding is handled. Instead of making it available just to new immigrants who have just come to canada in the past 5 years, Toronto needs flexibility to use some of the esl funding for young school age children who even though they have been born in Canada, they do not yet speak English when they start school. They do not speak English because their parents are usually working two jobs and child care has been given to grandparents who do not speak English. these children without some language training will be off to a very slow start.
Toronto cannot sustain this rate of attrition. We have a dying board … $1 billion in cuts in the past 12 years. Instead of cuts, the province needs to let US BEGIN TO re-engineer OUR schools AND PROGRAM DELIVERY.
There are creative solutions if the Province would stop micro-managing and let us get on with saving our school system. The province needs to step aside and give us the flexibility to do it.
Steph says:
In 2003 the Rozanski Report came out calling for an overhaul of Ontario’s Education funding system. A report that was initiated by the Conservative Government who saw failures in their own funding system. All parties rallied behind the report as their vision of education in Ontario.
Here we are six years later and the TDSB is no better off now as it was under the Conservatives. Pool closings, School closings, cuts to EA’s, Principals having to choose between ESL or gym. The Liberals have not implemented the Rozanksi Report in the manner of repairing and improving the system. Money has slowly been dipped into the system under guise of improvements, oddly during election time, which only prolonged the bleeding of the school’s. Now those funding are about to end or money has to be spent on specific programs, regardless whether need is not there, which is forcing the TDSB to make drastic decisions or break the law by not balancing their budget.
Cuts
3 million for textbooks
3 million classroom computers
1 million in Special Ed.
3 million school budgets (using the funding formula)
Transportation …
In 2007 McGuinty said “Things are a lot better than they were when the Conservatives were in power”. Most would suggest not much has changed…
“When they were in power the Conservatives divided us. Our schools were battlegrounds. Ontario kids and families put up with budget cuts, disheartened teachers, closed schools and crumbling facilities” said the Premier. What has changed?
McGuinty says a strong public education system is his passion, I have yet to see that.
Jean says:
Our $100 million budget shortfall in Toronto is just the canary in the coalmine. It is a symptom of a larger and far more serious problem.
What we have here is not just a budget deficit … but a leadership deficit.
McGuinty talks a lot about the knowledge jobs of the future, the hi-tech jobs, but what does he do? He cuts millions from textbooks and computers, the fundamental learning tools of the 21st century.
In our city, we’re seeing community-oriented schools dismantled and merged into factory-size education mills so that the left-over buildings can be sold off. We’re told it’s the only way to cope with our multi-billion dollar maintenance backlog. This backlog was created in the first place by more than a decade of starvation budgeting from the Provincial governments. As a model for making our city’s education system viable, selling off these historical buildings is no more sustainable than burning the furniture to heat the house would be.
This is a sign of creativity and imagination missing in action. It’s a symptom of myopic leadership when it comes to making large city communities viable and thriving.
Our downtown wards had a well-attended public forum around this year’s budget. 3 main themes emerged during that meeting:
- People shared their discouragement: They could quantify in their own lifetime how the school system is more and more dysfunctional, and it broke their hearts.
- People shared their anger: They clearly instructed the TDSB trustees to NOT ACCEPT this “incredible shrinking budget”, this “on-going death by a thousand cuts”. If the liberals balk at that, “bring ‘em on!” they said.
- And they shared their ideas to make OUR schools into integrated community hubs, into revenue centres, into effective places for learning.
Here are but a few of their suggestions (2 grade fivers step forward):
Micah leans into the mike and says :
- My school could be more eco-friendly by using solar panels, wind-mills, and so on.
- If people in the neighbourhood used the buildings more, it would help keep the kids safer.
Billie leans into the mike and says :
- There could be a roof garden on our school. It would help the students learn about growing food and it would help keep our 3rd floor cool, in more ways than one.
- There are new projects LIKE using the school grounds for geothermal energy generation to light the neighbourhood — when is it coming to my school?
Jean continues:
Integrating daycare, public health facilities, adult learning, ESL, recreation, and more — this would create safer, well-rounded learning centres for all. The list went on. The current centralized, tight-fisted governance model completely gets in the way of these grassroot solutions.
This government PROMISED Rowansky — that is a vision of life-long integrated, localized learning. Instead we’re given the same top-down, unimaginative cookie-cutter approach that has PROVEN to be destructive. You’re putting all our eggs, MY EGGS, in the 3 R’s, Mr. McQuinty, just like Mr. Harris did before you. You’re continuing to ignore what the education visionaries of the world are telling us: They’re telling us that imagination, creativity, community and citizenship are the keys to a thriving life of learning and shared prosperity. When the kids are inspired by creativity around them, reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetics take care of themselves!
What we need is an opening up of the silos between ministries and between the levels of government, so that we can turn these tremendous assets, our schools, into hubs for our communities, rounding out our vision of education to include adults, health, recreation. We don’t need a quick buck from the fire sale of our assets that’s forced upon us by the province. We need a creative long-term vision that’s responsive to local needs.
Mark concludes:
We need a creative long-term vision that’s responsive to local needs. WE NEED A NEW APPROACH. TO SAVE OUR SYSTEM AND TO REMOTELY HAVE A HOPE OF FILLING the KNOWLEDGE JOBS OF THE FUTURE:
- The Province HAS to stop micro-managing local boards
- IT SHOULD move to envelope funding with designated provincial priorities and targets to achieve specific government goals and benchmarks
- Heavy investment in textbooks and computers, the fundamentals of 21st century learning
- no budget cuts at all to special education
- more flexibility with the budget envelope to deliver programs tailored to local needs – ESL, special education
- allow school boards/schools to re-categorize space so that schools can become community hubs and MAGNATE SCHOOLS TO RETAIN STUDENTS IN OUR COMMUNITY
TODAY WE HAVE ISSUED AN INVOICE FOR $100 MILLION TO THE PREMIER TO TRY TO CAPTURE HIS ATTENTION.
The education system is the titanic heading for that big iceberg. CAPTAIN MCGUINTY HAS AN OPPORTUNITY TO MISS THE ICEBERG OR CRASH INTO IT. The PROBLEM IS THAT LIKE WITH the TITANIC, THERE WILL BE FEW SURVIVORS.