Leonard Baak, "More schools means more costs", Port Hope Evening Guide, August 8, 2007.
 
Reprinted with the permission of the author.
 
More schools means more costs
 
To the Editor:
Re: Ontario should fund education for all faiths, Port Hope Evening Guide, Aug. 2.
 
Gila Gladstone-Martow isn't exactly comparing apples to apples when suggesting that because French, arts-based, sports-based, behaviour modification schools, and gay/lesbian schools receive funding, faith-based schools should, as well.
 
None of these other types of schools discriminate on prohibited grounds (religion, race, ethnicity, gender) in admissions and hiring - faith-based schools invariably do.
 
Schools that discriminate on such grounds have no place in the public system.
 
Furthermore, the Ukrainian schools she mentions are still Catholic and the Protestant school "board" she mentions has only one small school (264 students), another relic from the 19th century that Ontario should do away with.
 
Ontario taxpayers pay a significant duplication premium to fund the religious schools we already do. Examine the per-pupil funding in the current four systems and you will see that per pupil costs rise as the size and geographic density of the population served decreases.
 
By extending funding to new faith groups, we will be serving even smaller constituencies than we do already - at a much higher per-pupil cost.
 
Alberta provides the kind of full funding the Ontario Tories are now proposing, but also boasts the most expensive education system in the country on a per-taxpayer and a per-pupil basis. We can't afford to go there.
 
It is also hard to imagine how expanding public education to include more "exclusive" (religiously homogenous) and discriminatory religious schools could constitute "inclusive public education", as Ms. Gladstone-Martow suggests.
 
John Tory's plan will fragment and polarize Ontario society, undermine the financial well-being of our truly inclusive public schools, and make the concept of a neighbourhood school that reflects the diversity of its community a thing of the past.
 
It is time, instead, to eliminate the Catholic system and move to one school system equally accessible to all.
 
Leonard Baak,
President, Education Equality in Ontario (www.OneSchoolSystem.org) / Ottawa
 

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