October 21st, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
An Open Letter to Minister of Education Jill Dunlop, MPP Ted Arnott, MPP Stephen Crawford, MPP Zee Hamid, MPP Effie Triantafilopoulos and MPP Natalie Pierre
For years, Halton Catholic teachers have watched the erosion of Ontario’s publicly funded education system play out in our classrooms.
- School violence has increased, which is taking a physical and emotional toll on students and teachers alike.
- Class sizes are too large for teachers to give students the individual attention and one-on-one support that they need.
- Recent briefing documents produced by the Ford Conservative government warn of a future that Catholic teachers already see in our schools – a growing and direteacher recruitment and retention crisis.
Underpinning it all is the Ford government’s active choice to underfund education, which has happened each and every year since it was elected in 2018. We know these issues will only get worse if immediate changes are not made.
In our district, with less than $1 a day per student for basic school supplies, teachers are forced to ration essential classroom resources, like paper and pencils. Halton schools do not have enough physical textbooks for students to use in class, nor are there enough functioning computers for them to access the texts online.
We are forced to stretch ourselves thin, taking on multiple roles – becoming counsellors, behaviour specialists, and even administrators – on top of our primary teaching duties.
Catholic teachers want to do the job we love in a learning and working environment that helps students thrive and succeed. But we, along with teachers in classrooms across Ontario, cannot keep doing more with less.
Halton Catholic teachers are on the front lines of this crisis, and we live these issues alongside our students each and every day. We know what they need to succeed, which is why we are calling on your government to end the cuts and provide real and sustained investments in education. Our students deserve better.
Tara Hambly, President, OECTA Halton Secondary Unit
Vanessa Slee, President, OECTA Halton Elementary Unit
Perhaps the “surplus” $145000 spent by the Brant Haldimand Catholic Board on a trip to Italy and Italian artefacts should have been invested directly in students’ futures. Do we know how many other boards may have wasted taxpayers dollars?
I agree. My son is in a first year university Engineering program and he told me that U.K. international students are commenting that their first year Chemistry, Physics, Calculus courses are a review of Grade 12 while our kids are learning a new curriculum. It does not seem that the Canadian Ministry of Education’s standards are high enough vs. International benchmarks. Student mental health issues are also ballooning and need to be researched, assessed and addressed. I do agree – our kids (Catholic and non Catholic) deserve better and our standards should be held up against the highest international benchmarks at all school levels. Learn from the best and invest in our kids’ future. In this same vein, I do not support teacher strikes during the school year. This harms our kids.
Editor’s note: There is no Canadian Ministry of Education. Education is a provincial responsibility.