Public school pupils suffer from current structure

chrisOne thing all parents have in common is that they all want the very best for their children. Growing up, my parents sent me to the Toronto Catholic District School Board for both elementary and high school. At a young age, I had the perception that the “separate system” was better and that everyone in the “public system” wanted into it.

I remember that the schools I attended seemed newer. Our textbooks were always new or almost new. Unlike my public school friends, I really did not have much to complain about – except my high school uniform. One question I recall asking myself, as far back as third grade, was: “Why can’t my after-school friends attend the same school as I? Why does everything have to be separate?” As a child, no one gave me a satisfactory answer; most did not know the answer themselves. As an adult, the question continued to weigh on me for a while until I found the answers I needed.

The answers, of course, were political in nature. It was only in the mid-1970s that the separate school system was provided with full funding for all Catholic schools in the province. The decision to do so was made by the Progressive Conservative government of Bill Davis. Mr. Davis had a very close relationship with Cardinal Gerald Emmett Carter, the Archbishop of Toronto at the time. And so, we went from having two publicly funded school boards (French and English) to four. Initially, money for education seemed to flow from the heavens. But later, with a new per-student education formula in place, it was the public school boards that received the short end of the stick. And thus began the decline of public education in Ontario.

Fast-forward about four decades. The Toronto District School Board is the largest school board in Canada with approximately 270,000 elementary and high school students and 14,000 adults returning for continuing education. The board has an annual budget of $2.6 billion dollars for 2012-2013. Yet a majority of the board’s schools are in decline and in desperate need of repair.

In recent years, the public board has had to sell schools, or part of its land holdings, in order to cover the cost of urgent repairs at some schools. In some cases, the board is hanging on by its fingernails. We have schools that are half empty. Others are in desperate need of repair and potentially dangerous to the health of those who work and learn within them.

chris

The schools in the poorer communities of Toronto are in even worse shape. Some parent councils have taken the initiative to bring in new resources to their children’s school. Unfortunately, parent councils are not operating on an equal footing. A parent council in Rosedale, for example, can easily raise money for an outdoor jungle gym for their school. A parent council in Regent Park, on the other hand, simply hopes that their children don’t get hurt on the concrete playground.

The recent scandal involving former Director Chris Spence and the $10 million cost overrun of Nelson Mandela Junior Public School certainly haven’t helped the already tarnished image of the board. This is a time when the TDSB needs real leadership—strong leaders—to come forward and tackle these difficult issues head on. The interim director, Donna Quan, can’t do it alone. Trustees must move from a passive observational role to a take-charge-of-the-ship mentality. They must start the transformation of the board and rebuild its image.

How to rebuild? Change must take place on a number of fronts. The trustee position is an important one. We must give trustees the tools and authority that they need to do their jobs correctly. The province should reinstate trustee positions to full-time status so trustees can devote more time to the needs of the organization. Having a presence in our schools, participating on committees, being steps away from the director’s office on a daily basis, and providing advice and feedback are important aspects of the work of Trustees.

Second, and most importantly, the Province of Ontario must return to a single publicly funded system offered in English and French. If we don’t address this structural problem in the immediate future, then our public school system will deteriorate to the point of irreparability. Moving to a single school system is certainly not a new idea. As recently as 1997, the National Assembly of Quebec asked the federal government to exempt the province from having multi-faith schools, and to permit it to provide only one French board and one English board. We can use the Quebec model as a template to move forward.

I have come a long way since my age of innocence in some of Ontario’s Catholic elementary and secondary schools. As an informed adult, I have learned that they came at a great cost to public education elsewhere throughout Ontario.