How do we value education?

The Toronto DSB continues to discuss where to make cuts to balance its 2025-26 budget. This goes on against a backdrop of one audit by the Auditor General’s office last year and now another investigation into its finances by yet another auditor, Price Waterhouse Coopers. Education Minister, Paul Calandra, who ordered the special investigation, has warned the TDSB, the Toronto Catholic DSB and the Ottawa-Carleton DSB if they don’t balance their budgets he will take them over and do the job for them. Just yesterday the Ford government extended the threat, introducing the Supporting Children and Students Act to make such takeovers easier while requiring boards to implement School Resource Officer (SRO) programs, something that the TDSB adamantly opposes.

Tough talk from someone whom you might expect to support the value of education rather than just its cost. A month ago John Weatherup, president of the Toronto Education Workers, CUPE Local 4400 talked about such values in his deputation to the Board.

 

I’m John Weatherup and I’m president of the Toronto Education Workers CUPE Local 4400. We represent about 17 000 members at the Toronto District School Board. We represent the caretaking and maintenance staff at the Toronto Catholic District School Board. We represent the French caretakers and maintenance staff at the Viamonde School Board and we also represent the staff at the Bloorview School Authority. Those are the school boards that we normally deal with. We will be providing to the trustees individual written descriptions of all the cuts they are viewing and again we are saying that you should not be making any cuts.

Every year I try to pick a book to come here and talk about. One year I picked out “Fantasy Land” by Linwood Barkley when the Board was looking at cuts. This year, I don’t know if anybody’s read it, I picked out Mark Carney’s new book and it’s called “ Values: Building a Better World for All.” There’s a section in there about how we value life, how we value society and how we value the people around us.

How do we value special education with the children who have fallen through the cracks? What is the value on that child for falling through the cracks? How do we deal with violence with our EAs (education assistants) and what’s the value of that in our school system?

What is the value of abandoning or asking questions around early childhood education and early childhood development? We know the risks associated with that. We know what the risks of not doing it are. We know that children will fall through the cracks. What is the value of what we think we are doing here as a school board moving forward?

We also know that outdoor education provides learning and outdoor experiences for children who may never leave this city where gangs and guns and violence are an issue. What is the value of those children being abandoned in our system?

We go through this process. I’ve heard lots of people speak. I’ve got to tell you I was disgusted by the survey that was put out asking our members what jobs they should cut, what fellow members they should cut – what fellow employees.

I just want to close by asking: How do we value seniors? The last thing I want is for seniors to pay for access to the school system through user fees. They pay for all our wages and now we deny them access to free programming and they still pay today in their taxes for those programmes. We abandon them, we isolate them and then we pretend and say, “It’s not part of the core programme.” They paid for the system. They paid for the freaking building we’re sitting in. I think we need to understand what’s the value of seniors, what’s the value of children and what’s the value of our members.

Thank you very much and I hope you say no to any cuts. I’ve been at this board 50 times saying the same thing.

 

 

This presentation was lightly edited for clarity.