Trustees Stand Up for Public Education - Refuse Staff Cuts - Feb 28 2007

Toronto School Board Defies Provincial Order To Balance Books
Thursday March 1, 2007
City News

Faced with the unappealing decision of cutting more than 300 jobs to balance its books, Toronto District School Board trustees refused to axe the positions and presented a deficit to the province.

Dalton McGuinty's Liberals had instructed to board to cut its staff and also reduce the student-teacher ratio. But Wednesday night's meeting, which was to look at cutting 100 inner city school teachers, 27 librarians, 157 education assistants, and 34 lunchroom supervisors, went into overtime.

After hours of pondering how to reassign teachers or make do with fewer librarians and lunchroom supervisors, the board finally decided to present a revised staff allocation budget to the province in the hopes the McGuinty government would accept it. The new budget represents a $7 million deficit for the board.

"The idea of losing lunch supervisors - what's going to happen?," asked one lunchroom supervisor, Linda Kendall, attending Wednesday night's meeting. "Are our kids going to have to stay home? Are parents going to have to now try to find alternate day care or something for their children?"

Trustee Nadia Bello said the province wasn't leaving them with much choice.

"The money supposed to protect inner city kids, supposed to protect communities is being moved around, being used to pay maintenance, being used to pay for all kinds of other things, right? Heat, utilities - all that other kind of stuff," she maintained.

The province demands that school boards present a balanced budget - failing to do so could result in a provincial representative being brought in to look for ways to reduce costs.

The TDSB has cut the number of educational assistants once already, and the board says it's had to close some school libraries.