Teachers and education workers urge Grand Erie to prioritize front-line student supports

Joint Media Release

JUNE 21 - There is a critical need for more one-on-one supports in the Grand Erie District School Board, say teachers and education workers, who issued a joint press release last week. This is why education workers with the school board shared their stories with school board trustees through a Tell the Trustee Postcard Campaign to ensure that 2024-2025 budget stakeholders heard their voices must be heard. Representing over 2,800 elementary education workers, CUPE 5100, the ETFO Occasional Teacher Local, the ETFO DECE Local, and the ETFO Teacher Local are standing together in solidarity in an urgent call for essential student supports in Grand Erie schools

We urgently need more educational assistants, psychologists, behavioural consultants, counsellors, child and youth workers, communicative disorder assistants and speech language pathologists. We must also ensure there is at minimum one fulltime special education learning resource teacher in every school to meet the promise of an inclusive education system, the press release stated. It went on to read, inclusion without supports is abandonment. We support an integrated model for education, which means that students, whenever possible, should be learning together with their sameage peers regardless of their needs. This, however, requires full funding and full support. For students to succeed, there must be adequate funding for staffing, training, and resources Front-line supports are often not available or underresourced for educators and students Consequently, classroom evacuations are happening all too often as a result of school violence, caused by students' needs going unmet.

President Carolyn Proulx-Wootton of the Grand Erie Elementary Teachers' Federation says, "Learning for all cannot happen when there is chaos We are calling on the Trustees to put students and their families first by amending this draft budget and investing in our children. Students deserve nothing less."

President Amanda Baxter of the Grand Erie District School Board Occasional Teacher Local is concerned about the impact that these learning and working conditions are having on students and education workers She says, "Many educators are finding they cannot meet all the needs of the students and they are running to stand still."

As part of a newly released Ministry of Education funding model, the Grand Erie District School Board has shared that they will be underfunded by over $1 million for next year. In spite of our call to create a student needs-based budget, like the Greater Essex District School did last week, The Grand Erie District school board's draft budget maintains an $11.1 million surplus from the current year The draft budget was presented at the June 24th Board meeting.

The Ontario Public School Boards' Association recently sounded the alarm on school board funding, stating that 2024-2025 provincial funding "falls short of what is needed to ensure all students are set up to succeed " Once inflation and enrolment are considered, Ontario's public education budget for 20242025 will be more than $3 billion below where it was six years ago. Per-pupil funding will be $1,500 lower this coming school year than in 2018-2019, when the Ford government first came to power.

You can view the entire Grand Erie District School Board draft budget online here. Minutes from that meeting are not yet available.