I will not forget young Crystal, a student with disabilities, who sat in her wheelchair, and quietly told me;
“Irwin I used to believe that the role of education is to lead society, to what it can be; but now, I know schools are just modelling what society is and has been”
She like so many, hundreds of thousands of students, who with or without a disability struggle so hard to bridge the chasm between the promise of our school system and their lived experience.
There are more fine words written to guide the education system than perhaps any other system government is responsible for. Often flowery promises to children and parents in legislation, regulations, frameworks, subsystems, protocols, directives, policies, outlines, guidelines….and then there is the reality children face.
In Don Valley West, where I am running as the NDP candidate in the provincial election on June 2 this year, children wait two years and more for an urgent educational assessment and four years for autism services. One social worker might be responsible for thousands of children and their families. Parents cannot send their children to school because there is no nurse to assist with assist with cleaning/replacing a tracheotomy. Principals and teachers try to cope with a school population where 40% of the students have a learning disability but there is only one Education Assistant to cover the entire school. In some schools, only 40% of the children in care will graduate, Black students report racism in the classroom, Indigenous students are not in the curriculum and LGBTQ students face taunts and harassment. The list goes on and on. This was all before the pandemic made life far worse for children, their parents and school staff.
Don Valley West by a long shot has no corner in Ontario on the chasm I am writing about. What I am writing about is no surprise to anyone involved, (the political leaders, the bureaucrats, the labour unions, the teachers and other educational professionals, advocates, and most importantly students and their caregivers) Everyone knows we are where we are.
Today our schools are in crisis, shuttered under the devastation of Covid-19. Schools open, then close, then reopen, then close again. Our children are suffering. Our school system is in crisis, a crisis that was set in place well before the pandemic, a path that was forged by Liberal governments and travelled, with great speed , by our current government.
Today, we have a Conservative government that is unwilling to face the crisis it has created.
Prior to the pandemic, the Ford government tried to increase class sizes. Why? To save money, arguing ridiculously that it would “build resilience” in our children. The Conservatives cut such programs as the School Success Program and special education supports. They told us that on-line learning was a ‘modern approach’ to education when the real reason was to save money. The on-line learning that we know now, due to our experience with Covid, is a sorry alternative to in-class learning.
But that wasn’t all. The Conservatives delayed and postponed school repairs, repairs that might have included, should have included, improving air quality. But that wasn’t all. The government tried to bully, demoralize and demean teachers, and school staff.
Conservatives cannot take their eyes off the dollar. They cannot place their eyes on our children. They cannot turn their minds to centre on our children. They can only cling to an old, musty, right-wing ideology
Its time for us to take matters into our own hands as best we can, and then work to elect a governments unafraid to make every decision centred upon the well-being of people
We can come together and develop a coalition of the willing. unions, frontline staff, principals, school boards, advocates, service providers, Ministry of Education bureaucrats who have the courage and, most importantly, students and caregivers. We must focus, all of us, on our children. We must come together, without a reticent government, and decide how we can begin to make instrumental changes, on the ground,. Change that will be seen in the lives of students and their families. Each person, each institution, has a sphere of influence – together collectively using our combined influence, the question will be what can we do on the ground to begin change now.?
This process of change making could be given full and robust life when an NDP government is elected on June 2, 2022.
This could create the school system Crystal once believed in. This is why I run.
Irwin Elman
Your NDP candidate in Don Valley West.