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Originally Posted by Point Blank
Hey everyone, I just wanted to update you all on the state of things in public education. I work for the CBE and it’s been really tough.
- Elementary schools have roughly lost two months worth of learning because of the sheer amount of assessments mandated by the provincial governments
- Lack of classroom space has led the combining classrooms with 2 teachers. Some elementary classrooms can have up to 40-50 kids, this leads to one teacher having to manage 5-10 disruptive students and the other teacher managing the other 30+ students
- Hardest hit are special ed classrooms as principals have to choose teachers or Ed assistants
- Elementary and Jr high school teachers are regularly evacuating classrooms due to student meltdowns, and have told me that they would ideally love to spend sufficient time to help those students develop strategies to navigate their feelings, but can’t because they don’t have the proper support and can’t leave the rest of their class unattended.
- I teach in a high school, almost every high school in the northeast is full. High schoolers in the NE designated for North Trail, Mandela or Pearson have to bus down to Fowler or Crescent Heights. Students in the far South have to bus to Beaverbrook.
- Classroom sizes in high school can be in the high 30’s to low 40’s. I spend entire weekends just marking as a result of massive class sizes (imagine having to mark 3x35 essays). We’re running out of space and have been converting cafeterias and storage spaces into classrooms.
- We’re told to print less because we don’t have the budget, but then at the same time to print everything we give because some students don’t have access to digital devices.We have no money to serve students in an equitable manner.
- Lack of funding leads to schools relying on parent council to fund new equipment, leading to inequities (schools in the NW and SW generally have a much more active parent council than schools in the NE)
- students are increasingly complex and administration is literally spending all day dealing with fights, students vaping in the bathrooms, disrespectful behaviours, and vandalized bathrooms (which btw aren’t getting fixed as quickly right now due to the CUPE strike)
Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about how our current government is intentionally sabotaging public education so that they can continue to vilify us with single issues such as pronouns and preferred names so that they can push for privatization.
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Some of these issues are so incredibly difficult to solve though. Like I’m 100% a public education supporter and don’t like the UCP. But I’m not entirely sure what the government can do about class sizes immediately, or a lack of available space. The reality is that our population has increased significantly. It’s great to think that we’ll build more schools and kids will all be able to go to school in their communities, but I do wonder how feasible that is in the shorter term?