A Message from Education Action: Toronto

July 14, 2009

Dear Friends,

     At its June budget meetings, the Toronto District School Board cut somewhere in the neighbourhood of $30 million from its 2009-2010 operating budget. For 2010-11, $37 million in cuts are projected, with 20 schools, it appears, on the chopping block. For 2011-12, the projection is $44.7 million in cuts.

     The savagery of these cuts is primarily the result of a flawed provincial funding formula introduced by Mike Harris and continued in its essentials by Dalton McGuinty. In a recent set of notes (please click to download), Hugh Mackenzie outlines just how destructive this formula has been, especially for large urban boards like the TDSB. He also proposes some key principles, which must govern the TDSB response to this funding crisis. A longer version of these notes will soon be available on the website of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

     The Liberal cutbacks we have seen in education are only part of a general decline in public services, which Dalton McGuinty claims to have reversed from the time Mike Harris and Ernie Eves governed Ontario. A good example is social assistance rates. "Since it took office," Hugh Mackenzie writes (see hugh@hughmackenzie.ca),"the McGuinty government has increased social assistance rates - Ontario Disability Support Plan (ODSP) and Ontario Works - only once. The ... real value of social assistance benefits is lower now than it was when the McGuinty government took office. Inflation since the 2003 election has more than offset the 3% increase in the government's first budget. The government should be ashamed."

     We are all going to have to be a lot tougher in resisting these cuts - at our local school level, at the Board, and at the provincial government. Come September, we have to put our minds to what this means, including community organizing in the trustee elections of 2010 and the provincial elections of 2011.

     At our last meeting we had a good discussion of our most recent policy initiatives. We are currently reworking a number of our policies, and these drafts should be up on our website - which is still under construction - by September, 2009. We wish we could move this process faster, but it's essential that as many views as possible are integrated into our discussions. Once the draft policies are up on the website in September, we hope you will take another close look at them and tell us what you think.

     With our best wishes for a great summer,

     In solidarity,

     George Martell and Faduma Mohamed
     Co-chairs, Education Action: Toronto