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Lighting a Fire -- Starting new chapters of OneSchoolSystem.org

12/6/2014

3 Comments

 
PictureWill you help us light a fire?
Leonard Baak
December 6th, 2014

We need your help. The Ontario Government currently plans to force school closures and consolidations to reduce the inventory of surplus pupil places (empty seats), which has ballooned from 120,000 to 416,000 during their time in office. That in itself is not an unreasonable idea, but doing so without simultaneously merging the public and Catholic school systems will be bad news for Ontario communities. It will be bad news for Ontario families and their children. Ontario's school system really is at a critical juncture.

Far too many Ontario students (my own included) ride buses for long distances to other communities to attend school. If under enrolled public and Catholic schools are separately closed while maintaining the two solitudes of separate but overlapping public and Catholic school systems, more students will be condemned to this fate.

Far too many Ontario students attend low enrolment schools that cannot achieve the critical mass of students necessary to support the more enhanced program selection available at fully enrolled schools. Most often, the only reason these schools cannot achieve that critical mass is because the children in their communities are needlessly divided into Catholic and non-Catholic camps.

Amalgamating the school systems would dramatically reduce the number of children bused to schools in communities other than their own while resulting in shorter average commutes for those that still require busing.

Amalgamating the school systems would facilitate the creation of more fully enrolled community schools that have fewer split grade classes and can achieve the critical mass to offer greater program choice more cost effectively.

Ontario has never really had true community schools of the type that most of Canada and the United States enjoy. Ontario schools are not true community focal points -- but rather focal points for the sub-populations that are of one faith or not of that faith. Ontario schools do not unite communities -- they divide them. In some cases, children in communities of nearly 20,000 people are bused to other communities to attend school.

Rather than ending the legacy of waste and discrimination in our school system and its attendant injury, our government seems set to compound it. We cannot let that happen. It is time for the people of Ontario to stand up and say "Enough is enough. No more waste. No more discrimination. No more children suffering the consequences resulting from a narrowly possessed and unjustifiable privilege." Please join us in standing up and making these demands.

I apologize for failing to engage those of you who have contacted us in the past with offers of help. We still have some of those contacts and will be following up shortly. If you do not hear from us, please contact us again. The status quo pronouncements of politicians notwithstanding, success has never been so close -- and success has never been so important to the people and communities of Ontario.


We need to win this fight. We need to win it now.

Real community schools.  Real community focal points.
Children learning in their own communities. Less cross-community busing.
Fewer split grade classes. Greater academic opportunities and choices.
Greater cost effectiveness. Less waste.
3 Comments

Now is the time to protect what is really important -- and to be willing to part with what is not.

2/12/2012

9 Comments

 

Friends.  This Wednesday, Feb 15th, is the scheduled release date for the Drummond report.   Mr. Drummond was tasked with examining all areas of government spending, identifying unnecessary and duplicate expenditures.  It is hard to imagine that he could miss the massive duplication and overlap in our school system.  We are confident that any competent and thorough examination of provincial programs would not fail to notice this and point it out.

Of greater concern to us than the possibility the waste in our education system could be overlooked is the relative certainty that Dalton McGuinty and company will summarily reject any recommendation to deal with it.  He has already said, at least twice that we know of, that he will not even consider any recommendation to eliminate public funding for Catholic separate schools.  That is unfortunate, as it all but ensures that austerity measures affecting our truly essential services will cut deeper than necessary.  There will be unnecessary pain.

Eliminating public funding for Catholic schools would not genuinely hurt anyone.  It would only result in Ontario Catholics having to take personal responsibility for the religious upbringing of their children.  It would only result in them being treated the same as every one of us who is not an Ontario Catholic.  Not eliminating that funding, however, will guarantee greater pain elsewhere -- probably in services that families cannot easily provide on their own.

Be alert for letter opportunities this week and beyond.  If you’ve never written letters to the editor, now is a good time to start.  See our
letters page for ideas.  The Drummond report will be very big news.  Civil servants could face layoffs, wage freezes, unpaid days off, or outsourcing.  They might be interested to know that as this happens, unnecessary spending on religious  schools for a single favoured faith continues.  Vested interests will be lobbying furiously as the government decides where the axe will fall.  We need to point out the difference between essential and non-essential programs at every opportunity.  We need to point out that public funding for Catholic schools is not essential!

Please rise to the challenge.  It is time fairness and fiscal responsibility came to education in Ontario.

Education Equality in Ontario
9 Comments

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    Various, OneSchoolSystem.org

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