In a story that is all too common across the province, parents and teachers from the Toronto District School Board calling into the CBC Radio’s Ontario Today described a school board that is struggling due to a lack of resources.
CBC reported that parents and teachers described old schools with no air conditioning, washrooms that sometimes have no toilet paper and hand soap, not enough cleaning staff and violent behaviour in classrooms.
The lack of provincial funding is undermining public education, providing the bare minimum and failing to meet the needs of the most vulnerable students. The TDSB is looking at options to balance its 2025-2026 budget as it faces a $58 million dollar deficit. While Doug Ford’s Ontario government is finalizing its budget (due May 15), the TDSB passed a motion calling for urgent talks with the new Education Minister Paul Calandra to address what it calls a “growing inflationary gap” in per student funding in Toronto.
Budget cuts impacting students
Meanwhile the TDSB is proposing closing pools and swimming programs, cutting music teachers and student access to laptops and, most shockingly, recommending increasing class sizes! The province looks tough to move on this, as they launched investigations into three boards due to spending and have taken over the Thames Valley District School Board due to “financial mismanagement.” In a news release in April, Education Minister Paul Calandra said, “our government will be relentless in ensuring school boards stay focused on what matters most: equipping students with the tools they need to succeed.”
But anyone that has spent any significant time in Ontario schools will tell you, students are not given what they need to succeed and the insufficient funding exaggerates inequalities in our society. Students that face the biggest structural barriers to success (poverty, disability etc) will suffer even more. Special Education and ESL teachers are pulled to cover absences, violence interrupts lessons, and teachers spend more time on managing behaviors than learning. Increasing class sizes and cutting programs will exaggerate this problem.
As Ontario education funding fails to keep pace with inflation, the blanket becomes shorter and shorter. As it’s pulled in one direction it creates a new deficiency elsewhere.
Budgets are about priorities
As always, this is a question of priorities. Doug Ford can find millions of dollars to get alcohol in stores or to give away to developers, but can’t meet the needs of students in this province. We need to unite as parents, teachers, education workers of all kinds to fight for the funding we deserve. Smaller class sizes, more EAs, cleaner schools and safer classrooms are all possible, but they require forcing the government to prioritize that. Uniting across unions to push for a better vision of education is necessary to make that happen.
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