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Category: Education policy

Corporate tax rockbottom as education under-funding continues

Finance ministers were up to their fiscal trickery last week: cooking the numbers to balance their books while our schools crumble. The feds, which slashed provincial education & health transfer payments back in the mid-80s, this week further reduced revenues by delivering 5 billion dollars in tax cuts (mostly benefiting the country’s wealthiest 15%) while also snipping 36 […]

tired old funding formula

The misnomer of Grants for Student Needs  The general public may have given a collective sigh of relief on March 26 when the Minister of Education Liz Sandals announced that funding for public education in 2015/2016 would be the same as this past year—$22.5 billion. The Wynne government has continued to remind Ontarians that they […]

education funding in Ontario for 2015-16

 Education funding for 2015-16 was announced on March 26, 2015 by the Ministry of Education.  Only the Grants for Student Needs (GSN) were released.  The Education Program – Other (EPO) announcement will be at some future date.  In addition to the GSN the Ministry released a revised version of the Pupil Accommodation Review Guidelines, which […]

Education funding still dangerously inadequate

While the Ministry of Education has offered stabilized funding in the face of declining enrollment for 2015-2016, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) is concerned that longstanding structural funding issues are continuing to have a negative effect, in particular on students with special needs and the implementation of full-day Kindergarten. “While Ontario has embraced […]

Austerity’s unaffordable tax cuts breed extreme poverty

“The Right’s greatest success has been to redefine taxes as a burden” says Alex Himelfarb, former clerk of Canada’s Privy Council: The number one issue for me is inequality. … Austerity at every level of government–largely self-imposed through years of unaffordable tax cuts – has eroded our key redistributive institutions, welfare and employment insurance, and […]

$500m cut to education budget

Some schools in Ontario will be shut down as the Liberal government makes education funding cuts to help eliminate a $12.5-billion deficit in three years, Education Minister Liz Sandals admitted Tuesday. The planned cuts are included in the government’s 2015-16 education funding guide, which was obtained by the New Democrats and calls for permanent savings […]

Elections mean democratic governance

September, 2014 Dear School Community Council members, As many of you have noted, the Toronto District School Board has been moving away from public accountability by doing more and more of its business in “in-camera” sessions. These private sessions should be restricted to strictly confidential human resource matters. The public is entitled to know how […]