School Boards

Support your frontline. That’s just good business.
I hope the 76 school boards in Ontario figure out soon that it’s the schools that need the money and resources not the obscene amount of administrative office buildings full of staff that never see a kid’s face in a day. School boards have taken all the fun out of teaching.

Enough of the online tools! Enough of the forms. Forget the make work projects, new rules and protocols. Make forms easier--not harder and supplies a cinch to get. Encourage fields trips and special activities and squash the 28-page document that needs to be filled out before they can go.

We send our kids to school trusting that they will learn, have fun and be safe. Unfortunately, now a days every school has a drawer full of pills. Where’s the nurse? Every school has delinquent kids, where’s the security guards? Every school is filled with anxious and depressed kids, where’s the counsellor? Every school has neglected children, where’s the social worker? Every school has underdeveloped and special needs kids. Where’s the resource teachers and teaching assistants? Our teachers are the front line in the trenches dealing with all these problems with limited resources and rights. The annual Ontario budget for education is $23 Billion dollars. Show us the money and put it back into the building where the kids are.

Then there is the Education Quality and Accountability Office, (EQAO) an independent agency that creates and administers large-scale assessments to measure Ontario students reading writing and math skills. Don’t regular tests exams and standardized curriculum cover all that? Am I the Only One?
EQAO testing is a disaster in the city. The results are published in the newspaper and suddenly people think their school is below average, our kids aren’t smart, and our teachers aren’t doing their jobs. None of it is true. EQAO has 10 board of directors with an annual cost to Ontario taxpayers of $32 million dollars. Does this help the public education system or is it just another gigantic waste of money? All it did in the city was create a lot of animosity, comparison and unwarranted gloating.

Supply teachers are in high demand. Teachers are taking more sick days and I can certainly understand the burn out from stress and frustration. We all know what happens on a day when the supply teacher comes in. Not much learning is going on that day either.


Hometown News
December

Comments

  1. Well done. I live in one of the largest school board districts that went from 4 down to 1 - TVDSB. Every student, community, tax payer and teacher has been affected by the quality and focus on what is really important and at stake. Our next leaders - THE KIDS!
    As a parent - my kids are not getting what I pay dearly for!

    ReplyDelete

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