Ontario Liberals Attack on Public Education
It looks like Wynne’s Ontario Liberals will put up to 300 public schools on the chopping block within the next 12 months.
Like most taxpayers and citizens, I hate hearing this kind of news because it sounds like an echo of defeat. My interpretation on this is similar to my response to Wynne’s cynical plan to reduce Ontario Hydro bills.
Everything she does, she does at the expense of people that can’t vote for her.
Children are bearing the brunt of Wynne’s hopeless and hapless management of Ontario.
Schools ultimately get closed for two reasons in this province:
- Sprawl
- Excessive administrative / management costs
Sprawl is Earth’s cancer. As we build ‘new communities’, we pull away from existing ones. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen a new, gleaming Catholic school located on a massive field in the middle of a soon-to-be-built suburb.
The suburbs act as a giant centrifuge, pulling bodies, money, commuters and other resources away from what we’ve tried to build in central areas.
And even if it’s a new public school, it draws potential homeowners away from urban areas into the burbs. It threatens the very core of what we city planners are supposed to strive for: intensification, integration and socialization.
Sprawl is the epitome of design and intellectual laziness when it comes to municipal planning.
Administrative costs with schools have skyrocketed. There are now several layers of management for every school, driving up the cost of keeping any institution. Of course, the same goes for hospitals, universities and even once-public organizations like Ontario Hydro, where administration / management costs now account for about a third of all budgets.
Instead of removing some of the bloat from the public ranks, Wynne would rather sacrifice the future of children and our urban centres.
What a shame.