CAN SCHOOL BOARDS AFFORD FOUR MORE YEARS OF THE EDUCATION PREMIER?

by Cathy Cove
copyright - Goderich Signal Star

If you were diverted enough over the course of the provincial election campaign to be lulled into a false sense of security regarding the issues affecting our schools, you are not alone.

We heard a little too often from the education premier that his record spoke for itself. His party’s line was that students were doing better, that class sizes were smaller and that education peace has been achieved thanks in part to a nice provincially negotiated contract.

All is well in the halls of academia……or is it?

Let’s take a closer look at just how all of that good news is translating to our students and school communities.

Education peace: current teacher contracts expire in August 2008. Support staff are in negotiations now in some places.

The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario is asking for $711 more per student, class caps in junior/intermediate grades, more preparation time and a lightening of their supervision role. I expect as this school year progresses the other unions will chime in with their demands, and so they should.

What will the government do for an encore and what will they expect from teachers in return?

Will the government over-ride local school boards again and bargain provincially?

Or, will the premier, as a Toronto Star editorial (May 12 2004) suggests “drift back to a Tory past”.

Quoted in that editorial, where he sounded more like a convert to the common sense revolution, McGuinty is quoted saying, “We gladly support public education, but we’re not going to throw money at it and hope that somehow it sticks.”

Test Scores Are Improving: Not according to the recent accounts of the results of the latest EQAO test scores. Both our boards made valiant attempts to put the best spin on scores that either flat-lined or declined, with the exception of Grade 9 math.

Have our school boards and classroom teachers been left holding the bag on a student achievement promise that if based on the current rate of improvement will take at least ten more years to accomplish?

What’s more perplexing is that even with the generous funding increases and implementation of a provincial literacy and numeracy secretariat, it hasn’t morphed into the kinds of improvements most would expect.

Perhaps the government could have clued in that one of our boards was struggling with reaching their targets by reading the Avon-Maitland DSB’s 2005-2006 Director’s Annual Report which stated, “Our EQAO results for the 2005-2006 school year are not on the trajectory we need them to be to reach provincial targets.”

Could it be that the remedy for mediocre student achievement lies somewhere other than a monetary increases with serious consideration for the use of effective, proven methods?

Declining enrolment: school boards across this province faced with continued declining enrolments are entering into accommodation reviews, despite very little help in the fixing of the funding formula.

Rural and small boards being especially hard hit what with the combined stresses of forced class size caps adding insult to injury by increasing multi-grade splits coupled with lower projected enrolments.

The new process for accommodation reviews established by the government is flawed in that it tries desperately to shift the focus of the reviews off of financial affordability to one of assigning value of a school to students, board and community.

Is any accommodation review committee going to suggest that the existence of their school means nothing of value to their community? I seriously doubt it.

In the end, it’s going to come down to what vision a community sees for its school based on, guess what?.... what we can afford with the money we are given and the choices we make on behalf of our students.

This isn’t going to be easy considering that both elementary and secondary schools will be squeezed for space what with the new promise of full-day kindergarten on the elementary end, class size caps at the junior and intermediate levels requiring more classrooms/portables. I thought we were seeing the last of portables?

At the secondary level, a full-compliment of students taking a victory lap in Grade 12, plus the possibility of moving 7s & 8s into the high school challenges for space and programs. At a recent GDCI school council meeting folks were told that the board’s overall enrolment is UP this year.

Enrolment in all of our town’s elementary schools is better than expected too. I’m not sure it’s going to take the average person or board trustee long to wonder why we’re even shining a light on our town’s schools if that’s the case.

Will there be a tipping point at which time the government quietly encourages boards to graduate students in four years with no option for a victory lap? A hard sell considering the law requiring students stay in school until the age of 18.

Funding Formula – The Rozanski commission recommended the establishment of a cabinet-level council on integrated services for children so that we might better identify and fund what’s important to our kids and our schools better. Are we any closer to seeing this happen?

There has been plenty of criticsm of the funding formula in the past, much of it coming from the Premier himself, yet very little attempt at doing something about it.

What the critics fail to recognize is that Dr. Rozanski’s report did ultimately confirm that having a funding formula that followed the student was sound practice.

That’s why I don’t believe that drastic change of the formula will result any time soon.

Will four more years of the education premium stretch our public boards and our patience to the max.?

It’s almost a certainty.

Stay tuned.



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SCIENTIA EST POTENTIA
Knowledge is power