Ontario teachers demand province increase education funding
Province says new budget is spending record $30.3B on education
Teachers, parents and students rallied outside Queen's Park Saturday to call on the provincial government to spend more on education, saying current funding will result in programming cuts that will hurt students.
In the province's new 2025-2026 budget released last week, the government set aside $30.3 billion, calling it a record investment.
But Mary Fraser-Hamilton, a teacher in the Peel District School Board and organizer with the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation (OSSTF), says it's not nearly enough.
"When you actually adjust it for inflation, it's pennies. But on top of that, we know that the needs in school are so much greater now than they used to be," she told CBC Toronto at the rally.
"You have serious mental health needs, violence in schools on the rise, and none of this funding is going to begin to address that," Fraser-Hamilton said.
Other teachers told CBC Toronto that underfunding is leading to larger class sizes and teachers taking on roles outside their job descriptions.
In a report last year, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that Ontario's core education funding has dropped by $1,500 per student since 2018, a figure the government has disputed.
Government scrutinizing school board spending
Though the government has expressed concerns that existing funds are being misspent.
Earlier this year, the province launched investigations into the finances of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) and Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB). TDSB trustees are currently considering shuttering pools and laying off instructors to help curtail its $58-million deficit.
The province also appointed a supervisor to oversee the Thames Valley District School Board after an investigation found instances of mismanagement.
"We expect all school boards across the province to spend every dollar of these funds directly on students, parents, and teachers," Education Minister Paul Calandra's press secretary, Emma Testani, said in an email.
"While we continue to make these significant investments, we will be relentless in holding school boards accountable for how they spend these funds," she said.
Provincial NDP Leader Marit Stiles, who was at Saturday's rally, said the province is using the findings at Thames Valley to justify less spending and pass the buck to school boards to cut programming.
"They download the responsibility onto boards to somehow make cuts that aren't going to impact students and to wear the responsibility for that. And it really is the government's responsibility," she said. "This is a pattern with this government."
That aligns with the position of the OSSTF, which said in a statement that the Ford government's new budget "does little to address more than a decade of chronic underfunding in Ontario's public education system."
Over 40 per cent of Ontario school boards are facing "serious deficits," the OSSTF statement said.
"The core education funding announcement may include increases on paper, but the reality is that these increases are nowhere near enough to address the budget pressures facing our schools," OSSTF president Karen Littlewood said in the statement.
One student says he's already seeing the effects of provincial underfunding in the classroom.
Raheem White, a high school senior in a TCDSB school in Mississauga, said Saturday that his class size in Grade 9 was about 25, but it's now pushing 35.
"Two weeks ago, one of my teachers asked me for my name and I've been in the class since February," he said. "And I don't blame the teacher actually, because if you have 35 kids and you're teaching three courses, it's kind of hard to remember all their names."
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With files from Naama Weingarten