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Part 5 – Political context and search for alternatives
What were the effects of the cuts in education money under the Harris government. What alternatives were there to the closing of Midland Avenue Collegiate? Was the development of adult education a possible solution? An international programme? Interviews with Annie Kidder, education spokesperson for the education rights lobby group "People for Education", Sharon Hirshenhorn, Brian Sambourne and Bruce Elliot, teachers.
What were the effects of the cuts in education money under the Harris government. What alternatives were there to the closing of Midland Avenue Collegiate? Was the development of adult education a possible solution? An international programme? Interviews with Annie Kidder, education spokesperson for the education rights lobby group "People for Education", Sharon Hirshenhorn, Brian Sambourne and Bruce Elliot, teachers.
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ÉducationTranscription
00:00To talk about the effects of the cuts in education, I just had to walk down the street from where I was staying on Barton Avenue.
00:12There, amid animals, musical instruments, and yet another cozy Toronto house, I met a feisty, thoughtful, committed lady.
00:20My name's Annie Kidder, and I'm with a group called People for Education.
00:23We began as a part of the parent association at my children's school, a committee of the parent association at my children's school.
00:30And we began when the principal came and asked us to raise money for math textbooks, and we were surprised at having to raise money for math textbooks.
00:41We always knew parents raise money for various sort of extras, but we were really concerned about what it meant to the idea of public education
00:49when parents raised money for what we'd always considered basics, things that your taxes are supposed to pay for.
00:56What did it mean to the idea of fairness?
00:57You know, it was fine for our school where we could raise the money, but what happened in other schools?
01:01Where they couldn't raise the money didn't mean they just didn't get any math books.
01:04So we started a committee that, you know, we said we'd raise the money, but as hard as we worked raising the money,
01:09we'd work to let it be known that we thought this was wrong.
01:11And that committee, that was in 1995, in the fall of 1995, and just at the same time the newly elected,
01:22had been elected in June of that year, Conservative government announced its first cuts to public education.
01:28And so then we started talking to parents in other schools, and we were concerned about what those cuts would do.
01:35And then we grew from there, and since then have become, now we're a provincial organization.
01:40We have a provincial focus, and we send a newsletter out to all the schools in Ontario now,
01:45and we run a tracking project.
01:49We decided it was important that somebody be tracking the effects of all the changes on the schools,
01:54so that we wanted to make sure that there was a way of keeping track of what happened when you made these cuts
01:59or made these kind of policy changes, and that you made the connection between policy changes and their effects.
02:04In terms of the rules changing, I guess I think the first rule that changed was a kind of an assumption of a commitment to public education
02:14that I grew up with as a good Canadian citizen, an assumption that it would always be there
02:23and that it was really important, that you had to fund it adequately, and that you had to try and make it fair.
02:28It was never completely fair. There was always more stuff in schools in affluent neighborhoods.
02:32But that was the assumption that we all worked with, I think.
02:37And I think when this government was first elected, the first thing they did was appoint an education minister
02:41who hadn't graduated from high school, and nothing against not graduating from high school,
02:45but it's a sort of sign of how you feel about, you know, kind of the importance of public education.
02:52And he seemed to feel that here am I. I'm a self-made man. I'm a millionaire.
02:55I didn't need to finish high school, and it's kind of been downhill since then.
03:00And they look at, you know, the other part of the rule change is that instead of having an education policy
03:08that they developed, they wanted to make all these changes.
03:11They got elected on this sort of common sense revolution idea.
03:14Instead of going, okay, we're going to have a revolution in education, too,
03:19and we're going to look at all the programs in education and kind of build a new education system from the ground up,
03:25they just looked at it as a fiscal problem.
03:28And really what they looked at it as, how cheap a system can we get away with?
03:32And the numbers that they used were based on very bogus averages and were not enough.
03:40They also developed this notion of the classroom, of what's inside the classroom and outside the classroom,
03:46and that things that were outside the classroom were expendable.
03:49So, and their notion of what was in the classroom was a teacher was inside the classroom,
03:56and the students and what the sort of basic student needs were inside the classroom, and nothing else.
04:00So you just had a teacher in a field, the classroom itself wasn't inside the classroom.
04:05Funding, the heat, the light, the principal, the library, nothing else was inside the classroom.
04:13And so when they, first they made that arbitrary division between inside and outside,
04:16and then they said everything outside the classroom is, those are expenses that can be cut more.
04:23You know, we can really tighten that up, there's too much fat.
04:26So once you decide that, and you narrow the funding that much, you can't keep all the schools open.
04:33And what we're seeing is schools that either aren't full by their notion of full,
04:38but also small schools close because their formula doesn't allow for small schools.
04:43Big schools are more efficient, right?
04:45You get really a lot of kids in a school, and you still only need one principal and one librarian,
04:50if you can have a librarian.
04:51So it's still all based on fiscal, it's all just based on money.
04:56It's not based on, there's been no study done to say every community needs a school,
05:01or a neighborhood needs a school, or...
05:03But doesn't this call into the question a little bit, the role of the boards?
05:07Because theoretically, they're supposed to be the place where the local community has power over education decisions.
05:13Yeah, but if you take away their control over money, I mean, if you don't give boards,
05:18if you say to a board, you can stay there and be a board, we're not going to pay any of your trustees,
05:22and we're not going to give you any control over money, they can't really do anything.
05:26I mean, our argument was resign, you know, quit en masse, say we refuse to do this, have a revolution.
05:33Boards aren't usually very revolutionary, though.
05:35So, yes, school boards are there to represent, you know, local needs and to take care of the needs of their community,
05:42and that's what they're supposed to do.
05:44And I think they've all tried really hard to do that, but they're completely, they're beyond constrained.
05:50You know, they're handcuffed by no funding and by a real restriction on where that money can go.
05:57There's no flexibility either to move money around.
06:00To grant this school board good intentions, I think it saw this as the best solution was to close the 30 schools they're going to close,
06:10and with the least suffering, you could argue against that.
06:16There had up to, before amalgamation, there was a policy in the Toronto board.
06:21We also amalgamated seven boards, right?
06:23I mean, we're dealing with a lot of different things at the same time.
06:26There was a policy to not close schools.
06:28It was a board policy, and they just didn't close them, because the population changes,
06:33and it's, you know, not sensible to close schools.
06:40Adult education was an important factor in the school, wasn't it?
06:43Very much so.
06:44I remember during some of the articles that there was a debate about how the adults were counted, whether they were counted.
06:49They weren't counted.
06:50They were simply removed when we were counting heads for the funding formula.
06:53The provincial government, the provincial conservative government that was elected in 1995,
07:00slashed our numbers arbitrarily by saying we could not count the adults.
07:06We could not count the cosmetology, which was a thriving program, and included both adolescents and adults.
07:12And we were absolutely not able to count the section 27, which, these are special students,
07:20most of whom have been withdrawn from the courts from their homes, placed in group homes.
07:25But the courts wanted to maintain the continuity of their education.
07:29So they would be placed in special classrooms until the program directors deemed that they were ready to be integrated into a regular classroom.
07:39And as a teacher, I was fortunate enough to come in contact, not only with the program,
07:43but with several students who were successfully integrated into my classes.
07:48They were absolutely not allowed, and so our enrollment dropped from just below 1,900 to 800 to 700 to down as low as 600 at one point.
08:00And it was like they were tightening the noose around our necks.
08:04They weren't taken into account because one of the things that happened at the same time that the funding model came in
08:08is the government changed the entire way that adult education was funded.
08:12Prior to amalgamation and prior to the funding formula, adults in regular day schools were funded at the same level as a 16-year-old,
08:21which was about $6,500.
08:23At the formula, any adult education, any education for a person over 21 was funded on the continuing education formula,
08:33which is $2,257, with no provision whatsoever for facilities.
08:39And so to count them was a nice option, but it was not an option that the board could do because there was no funding for them.
08:49So they were in there, and it continued to even be a bigger draw on the budget.
08:54So much as most of the trustees on that former board that I was on valued adult education,
09:01they knew that they couldn't count those numbers because there weren't receiving any facilities funding for adult learners.
09:09But how does that jive with the business of the education society and the information technology and all of this?
09:15It doesn't jive at all.
09:17I mean, but it's very popular from a provincial point of view to say, you know, we're not going to fund adults the same as teenagers,
09:23and then say, but, well, wait a minute, our welfare roles are increasing, people don't have education, somebody should do something.
09:30Well, it's a lot cheaper for a board of education to do it than some other institutions.
09:36I had people who were in their 30s and 40s who had been on the computer for the first time.
09:42I was teaching accounting to people who were thinking about running their own businesses,
09:48and this was the first exposure that they had had to accounting, marketing, the whole idea of sales, advertising, getting out there.
09:56And many of them have gone out there and started their own businesses.
10:00And I think that was a valuable contribution to society in general,
10:05and I feel that the money was worthwhile and it was well spent.
10:09Unfortunately, the government decided that that wasn't a priority, that it wasn't the government's role to educate or re-educate
10:21or to retrain people in the public school system,
10:25that that would be done by continuing education at a much lower cost,
10:30by people who were genuine, hard-working, but paid far less than, I guess, we were.
10:38They wanted to turn it into a business.
10:42And I guess there's nothing wrong with turning things into a business,
10:44but when it comes to dealing with people, you can't always do that.
10:52You can't always be looking at the bottom line.
10:56You can't always be looking for a profit.
10:58But you have to be sure that what you're doing is for the good of the person
11:04and not counting the number of units output or, you know,
11:10or just simply saying, well, this school has done well because it has an 80 or 90 average.
11:14Well, you've got to look at where they came from and you've got to look at where they ended up.
11:19Did they make progress?
11:21And I see this happening in a lot of the college systems and the university systems right now
11:26where government is giving performance objectives,
11:31saying we want you to have a certain level of graduation.
11:35We want you to have a certain level of marks.
11:38And, of course, funding is connected with that.
11:42And it's not unusual to think that the marks at certain colleges or universities
11:48might come up to those levels.
11:50And, of course, those levels of funding will be sustained.
11:56If that's what the government wants, I'm sure that's what the government will get.
11:59But it doesn't necessarily mean that education has been served as a result of it.
12:06I'm not sure.
12:06How did that go?
12:17We are from Midland.
12:19Proudly we hail thee.
12:21Onward with the green and gold.
12:23Boom, boom, boom.
12:24Onward to victory, honor and glory.
12:28We are striving for these goals.
12:30Boom, boom.
12:31Always we'll try to cherish our motto, semper ad optimum.
12:37Boom, boom, boom.
12:39Proudly we hail her.
12:40Honor we'll gain her.
12:42Honor for the green and gold.
12:46Yeah, that was it.
Recommandations
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