Editorial: Back to school?

August 29, 2019 Editor Opinion

Over the next week, students across Canada begin the next school year. For elementary and secondary students in Ontario, the return to classes may look very different from when they left just 10 weeks ago. And students may not actually be in the classroom for long.

Budget cuts at various school boards have impacted the classroom, especially at the Upper Canada District School Board. A total of $11.7 million was cut from the budget for the 2019-20 school year from that board. The ancillary layoffs and job restructuring mean that familiar faces at many of our kids’ schools will no longer be there.

A big hit to school board budgets took the form of funding changes by the provincial government. While MPPs charge that they increased the overall funding to many school boards, including the UCDSB, that is not a fully accurate claim. Transportation and capital funding have both increased, but funding for programming has decreased. As provincial funds have been set for specific initiatives, school boards cannot take from those funds and spend where there is the most need: programming. This means that while a school board can now better afford to bus students to a school, one possibly in better repair, those same students have far fewer programming options once there. Class sizes will be bigger. There will certainly be much less help for students at risk.

This near “perfect storm” facing education in Ontario is further complicated by the possibility of labour strife. Contracts between the province and the unions representing English-Public and English-Catholic board teachers and the unions representing office and non-teaching staff in schools all expire at the end of August.

While unions and the government both say they do not want a labour action, we have not seen so much acrimony on both sides since the days of Mike Harris.

Regardless of the funding and labour challenges, all sides, all parties, need to remember one thing: schools exist to teach students. That is the purpose of a school: to educate. Anything that distracts from, or interferes with, that task needs to be dealt with without hurting students. Unions, administration, board officials and provincial government mandarins who ignore that challenge, who put politics above students, do so at their peril.

Since you’re here…

… Thanks for reading this article. Local news is important. We hope that you continue to support local news in your community by reading The Leader, online and in print. Please consider subscribing to the print edition of the newspaper. Click here to subscribe today.

Subscribe to Email Alerts

Enter your email address to subscribe to Email Alerts and receive notifications of new posts by email whenever The Leader publishes new content on our website.

Related Articles

No Picture
Opinion

Go ahead, speak up

March 21, 2012 Editor Opinion

What do you wish were different in South Dundas? Is there something you think the municipality needs, but doesn’t have? I’ve heard that South Dundas needs more options for youth in the area. Children need access to more activities here IN South Dundas. Teenagers need more options for places to hang out, like a youth centre, as well as more options for safe, legal fun.

This week brings an opportunity for every South Dundas resident to have a say and to have their ideas heard. Ignore the internal list of excuses and come out to one of the four planned “Community Vision Cafés”! 

Forget about the “I don’t have the time” excuse and, instead, make time. (I’m a pro when it comes to the “I don’t have time” excuse, but I recognize it for what it is: an excuse, not a reason.) 

Forget the “it won’t make a difference so why bother” excuse and actually make the effort. Seriously, if we didn’t “fight” or “try” for all the things that looked hopeless, where would we be? Wars have been won by people who didn’t have a chance of winning. Games were won by underdogs who were thought to be useless. Nothing in life is guaranteed, but… if you try, you have a 50-50 chance of getting the result you wanted; if you don’t try, you have zero chance of getting what you wanted. Think about it. 

What do you wish were different in South Dundas?

Where do you see South Dundas in 10 years?

What ideas do you have that you feel are worth pursuing? 

What do you want council to hear? 

Make your mark. State your case. Push your idea.

And, if you’re one of those people who aren’t comfortable expressing your opinions in public… then do it online! It’s easy. It’s quick. It’s anonymous.

Whatever method you choose, whether in person at one of the cafés or online via the survey… 

Speak your mind. Say what you have to say. Share your ideas. Be heard. Be accounted for in the history of South Dundas.

If you woke up tomorrow to find yourself in South Dundas in the year 2022, what would you want to see?   -S.C.

[…]

No Picture
Opinion

GIBBerish

February 6, 2013 W. Gibb – Leader staff Opinion

 

When one is on the far side of 50 (sliding downhill even), it’s a bet that reasonable people might be forgiven for asking, “Why on earth did you ever take up tap dancing? Aren’t you the person who thinks using the television remote constitutes a full upper body workout? At your age, what the heck possessed you?”

To them all I say simply that I decided to take up tap dancing because I needed to get involved in some form of exercise, and no one wanted me on the Olympic Ski Team.

I enrolled in adult tap.

The other women in my tap class are perhaps a little younger than me (about two and a half decades). And they are each a little, shall we say, smaller, than me (about the size of my left thigh.)

They have all taken tap for some time, and most come to class in form fitting tights and tops. I tend to appear in those elasticized, ‘comfort-fit’ pants and men’s extra-extra-large t-shirts. 

Nonetheless, I am determined to get into shape through dance.

Actually, just bending over to try and get the tight buckles on my tap heels done up equals a full pre-class warm up for me.

Each week for months now we have extensively worked on steps like the frappé, shuffle ball change,  the brush, cramp, buffalo and Susie Q. And you know, just as soon as I can remember what any of those terms actually means, I’ll be fine. Currently, I struggle along about two taps behind everybody else in the chorus line: I would like to point out, in my defense, that it used to be four.

What I have primarily learned about tap recitals (yes, a recital!) is that you have to wear a costume. Recitals are an important high point of the dance school year, and hundreds of family and friends fill the hall to watch the performances.

Now that my teacher has firmly established that I must actually dance in front of the back drop curtain at the recital, I find I must also wear a costume. My class mates were very keen on the dance catalogue selections: short, strapless, backless frocks with lots of ruffles and glitter. Their suggestions were eye-catching. Youthful. Small. I mentioned that the last dress slacks I purchased carried a label that said ‘House of Omar the Tent Maker.’

We’ve actually compromised on a kind of 1920’s look for our recital number, complete with plenty of fringe. Still, in idle moments, I find myself imagining what the audience will be thinking if I get all that fringe swinging and swaying on stage, still two beats behind everyone else. Perhaps prairie wheat fields in a gale? Sigh.

The thing is, I like tap dancing. Really like it. I intend to go on.

Still, if I can’t get the choreography in the adult number down a little better by spring, I  secretly fear being ‘sent to the minors’ as it were: i.e. the junior tap class. 

This class is made up of five-year-old girls, with pig tails and pink tutus. 

I might stand out.

[…]