04) CUTS HIT DEEP IN TORONTO DISTRICT SCHOOL BOARD

By S. Howard Kaplan

     Toronto District School Board Trustees recently got the details of staff recommendations for cutting the expected $85 million shortfall in provincial funding of public education in Toronto. The recommended cuts include 587 full-time equivalent (FTE) school staff reductions, including secondary school teachers, vice‑principals, reading recovery teachers, literacy/numeracy coaches, intensive support programs, special education support staff, clerical staff, safety monitors, aquatics instructors, education assistants (EA's), and caretaking. This will be partially offset by the effects of implementing full day kindergarten (FDK), where the TDSB will take on additional elementary teachers, ECE's (early childhood educators), and lunch‑room supervisors.

     There has been a growing ground‑swell of opposition to these cuts, more than half of which (the EA's) will be women on the lowest salary rungs, and the most vulnerable.

     Most Trustees have heard the opposition. Whether most will oppose the cuts when it really counts - at the Board meetings - is another story. Groups of Trustees have been meeting informally to discuss ways of avoiding these layoffs, which are purely budget-driven, not needs‑driven.

     The issue of EA's has been a thorn in the side of Provincial Governments since at least the time of Mike Harris in the late 1990s. It is claimed that no other school board uses EA's. But there is no other school board like the TDSB, with about 250,000 students from all over the world in over 400 schools, many of them falling apart because of delayed maintenance. (The TDSB has typically robbed capital budgets to pay for operating/program shortfalls.)

     Ontario's school budgets almost exclusively come from the Ministry of Education through the infamous "Funding Formula" or Grants for Student Needs (GSNs). The GSNs are designed to pay less than the actual costs of mandated programs. For example, the Formula pays only 90% of the costs of FDK. Likewise, salaries are covered to only 90%. The grants for phones, office equipment, etc., would barely cover that needed by a small business, let alone a school of 500 students with varying needs, abilities and behaviours.

     At the same time, negotiations are about to start on new collective agreements with the teacher and staff unions, due for August 2012.

     Many Trustees fear that if the TDSB does not balance its budget, the government could appoint a supervisor to set the budget and staffing without consulting the Board. The supervisor would take over the functions of the Trustees. The last time this happened, under the Conservatives, the supervisor himself could not balance the budget!

     Today, however, the Liberal Government does not have a majority in Queen's Park. They would need the support of either the NDP or the Harris‑like Progressive Conservatives.

     We shall see what will happen, in the wake of the provincial budget to be handed down on March 27, one day after the deadline for this article. Watch the next issue of PV for developments.

     (Kaplan is the TDSB Trustee for Ward 5, York Centre)

(The above article is from the April 1-15, 2012, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)