school bus

Thursday April 30, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 30, 2020

School boards grapple with how to make Quebec’s ‘improvised’ back-to-school plan work

Coronavirus cartoons

School board administrators across Quebec have two to three weeks to figure out how to organize bus transportation, classroom layouts and recess protocols, after the provincial government decided it would be the first in the country to reopen public schools.

Premier François Legault announced Monday that elementary schools in most regions of Quebec will reopen May 11, while those in the greater Montreal region, where there are far more cases of COVID-19, would have an extra week to get ready for a May 19 start date.

The chair of the Eastern Townships School Board, Michael Murray, said there are still many unknowns, including how he’ll manage to get his students to school in the first place, with 80 per cent of the student body relying on bus transportation. 

Quebec Cartoons

Physical-distancing rules mean only one student per bench, so buses can carry just a fraction of the students they usually do.

“Typically our buses run pretty full, so we would need four times the number of buses in order to transport students,” said Murray.

Education Minister Jean-François Roberge said Tuesday while bus transportation will be “a challenge”, he said there will be more room because high-school students will be staying home.

“I think we will be able to manage it,” Roberge said. Among the measures the government is suggesting is putting up plexiglass between drivers and the students as added protection, especially for drivers over the age of 60.

The chair of the Central Quebec School Board, Stephen Burke, doesn’t think it will be that easy to solve the transportation issues.

He said his school board covers a third of the province’s territory — from Quebec City to Shawinigan to La Tuque — and 90 per cent of students take the bus.

“Those are issues that I don’t believe the minister or the government has really understood — nor what it means to reopen a school board such as ours,” Burke said. (CBC) 

 

Thursday August 29, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday August 29, 2019

Ontario students deserve better than the blame game

August 16, 2001

It’s that simultaneously wonderful (for parents) and terrible (for kids) time of year again.

Normally, back to school is a bit like Christmas for parents who, by now, have run out of ways to keep young kids busy and are seriously starting to wonder if their teenagers remember how to write without emojis and add numbers greater than their social media followers.

But thanks to the Ford government, this year’s return to school is also a time of concern and confusion.

Just days before students trot off in their first-day outfits with backpacks full of new school supplies, there’s more that’s uncertain than certain about what this year and beyond will look like for them.

September 3, 2013

What changes are being made to Ontario’s math curriculum, and will it do anything to raise math scores? Will the new mandatory online high school courses be innovative or simply a cheaper and lesser alternative to traditional classes? How big will real classes be, not just the “average” size the government likes to reference? How reduced will the options be in art, music, science and other electives?

And, of course, what will happen when contract negotiations really ramp up?

Teachers’ contracts expire three days before students take their seats. Negotiations on new contracts could, in theory, go smoothly or be lengthy, contentious and, in the worst-case scenario, result in the withdrawal of extracurricular activities or a strike before deals are struck.

June 25, 2015

So, amid all that, Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce stepped up last week to “reassure students and their families.”

He announced that class sizes wouldn’t be much larger this year. At 22.5 students in that famously average high school class, that’s up just half a student from last year.

That’s fair enough. But then Lecce suggested that the planned increase to 28 students within four years might not be needed because he’s open to “innovative ideas” that unions could bring forward to save money in other ways.

That’s not about reassuring students or giving parents and educators “predictability” – another of his claimed motives.

Lecce is doing nothing more than trying to shift the blame for the school changes that students and parents aren’t going to like from the government to the unions.

August 21, 2015

It’s a typical, if not very successful, negotiating tactic.

But students and parents know well that the reduction in teachers, increased class sizes and, worst of all, more limited course options are a direct result of the Ford government’s education cuts.

Last month, Lecce blamed the reduction in course options for high school students on school boards. Now, he’s hunting for a new target: teachers.

But this isn’t about teachers, it’s about students. And it’s about this government’s decision to save money in ways that will hurt struggling students, gifted students and generally make school a lot less interesting for everyone.

January 25, 2019

When Premier Doug Ford’s government first unveiled its education overhaul, it claimed it was “modernizing” the system. Then the first education minister said increasing class size was about making students more resilient. And now, with the new education minister, we’re to believe it’s suddenly all negotiable.

But it’s not.

Not so long as the government is determined to reduce its deficit through school cuts that risk the vital education gains that have been made in Ontario.

Ford and his education ministers are fast running out of excuses and ways to sell the unsellable. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Thursday August 16, 2001

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday August 16, 2001

Let’s not take summer away from our kids; Education: An idea with merit, but not now

Not here, not now. There’s a case to be made for an expanded school year that students (and their parents) could opt into. The province’s Task Force on Effective Schools is fundamentally right in suggesting some study on the issue is worthwhile.

A shorter (five-week) summer break and other more frequent breaks through the rest of the school year has shown itself to be a popular option for eight schools operated by four boards across the province. Student learning momentum is kept without a two-month interruption, and some families obviously find rescheduled holidays work for them.

But they certainly won’t work for everyone, and since our climate makes air-conditioning a requisite for summer programs, some boards would find it financially disastrous.

This is an idea that should be considered across the province only in the long term. Now is not the time to bring more radical change into Ontario’s schools.

Teachers and students are already trying to cope with enough change to rattle anyone: New curriculum; standardized testing; the loss of specialized special-ed, music and physical education teachers; textbook short ages; teacher testing/recertification (and the resistance that goes with it); the end of OAC and the so-called “double cohort; ” a loss of experienced teachers to early-retirement offers; and still uncertainty about after-school activities. And that’s not including the funding shortfalls and inequities that are forcing school boards into confrontations with their teachers and damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t choices about what they can a fford. Just about the last thing school boards need is a provincial directive to offer alternative school-year programs.

But there’s more to this than the logistics of climate control and issues of teacher contracts, parents’ schedules and learning retention.

Summer holiday is one of the last great perks of being a kid. The great writer Ray Bradbury wrote in his book Dandelion Wine about how, for a youngster, summer holidays begin by stretching off to a distant horizon, with the next school year so far away it doesn’t bear thinking about. When school lets out, summer is an infinite time of hikes and games and adventures, swimming and sports, comic books and fireflies and sprinklers to be run through. All too soon, part-time, then full-time, jobs strip that away. We need to really think about if schooling should take away the rest.

In this part of the world, summer is still, for most youngsters, so anticipated that it makes the rest of the school year bearable. It doesn’t matter if it’s Haliburton or Hutch’s, Wasaga Beach or Pier 4, the Bruce Trail or the Bayfront Trail, summer is still when families do the things we don’t make time for during the rest of the year.

There are some things more important than keeping our nose to the grindstone. And what our children make of their summers is part of that. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial, A10, 8/16/2001)