Asking a leopard to change its spots

It's getting to the point that when I read things about those who challenge Catholic school boards on the instruments of how they administer faith-based schools, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Witness today's article in the Globe by Katie Hammer on Ontario Catholic boards forcing their students to take religious education credits as part of their high school studies. This in a world where high schools are open to all, regardless of whether they're part of a publicly funded Catholic school board or a public school board. There are no restrictions on enrolment in Catholic secondary schools, unlike for elementary schools in many boards that still require the child and/or one or both parents to be baptized Catholics.
The number of requests has increased since the court decision earlier this year that allowed a non-Catholic student to opt out of religious education courses at the Catholic high school he attends. As the Globe explains today, boards are turning down exemption requests from those students whose parents have (on their property tax forms) declared themselves to be Catholic school supporters. This was a distinction that mattered more when school boards set tax rates in each municipality -- today, it matters not a lick other than in principle since the education portion of a property tax bill is sent to the province and then doled out by the ministry.
Let's set something straight. Catholic high school religious education courses are not four years of Bible study. I could stand to be corrected since it's been 18 years since I had personal knowledge of this, but religion credits in Grade 9/10 may continue to be mostly Bible/Catholicity based. Back in the day, the Grade 11 credit was a world religions course (social sciences credit) and the Grade 12 credit was a "man and society" course. Our OAC course was a half-credit, most of which was volunteer hours that have since been replaced by the diploma requirements for the same service.
The Grade 11/12 credits are ones available to any student studying in Ontario at any high school. Catholic boards, as a measure of showing how they continue to instruct their students in matters of faith, make the two senior-level credits mandatory. The requests for exemptions in senior grades are not to be exempted from sitting down and rote-learning the Bible, chapter and verse.
For a system trying to defend itself against being dissolved, the response to requests for exemption is a pretty smart move by the Catholic boards. Your guess is as good as mine on whether it will succeed.
The boards are simply pointing out the contradictions in intent-- as a parent and taxpayer, making the conscious choice to declare oneself as a Catholic school supporter but then turning around and saying you do not want that same school system to continue to instruct your child(ren) in the very faith you've declared yourself to be. If Catholics supporting Catholic school boards stop wanting their schools to teach their kids about faith all the way to graduation, then the only valid reason for a faith-based publicly funded school system in Ontario begins to evaporate.
For the non-Catholics who attend Catholic high schools, I can't say I've understood how the earlier court case was successful either, but that's another post.
We can't keep asking the Catholic school system to change its faith to suit our changing mores and understanding of who should be able to do (or not do) what within those schools. As long as we keep supporting the full funding of a faith-based system, it's ridiculous to keep asking that system to stop instructing its students in its faith under certain circumstances.
Parents who send their kids to Catholic schools for whatever reasons who don't like the faith-based elements of what's in that school always have an easy choice -- pull your kids from the school and register them in public schools.
As for the rest of us, if we're really that uncomfortable with what a faith-based school system looks like, then work to stop funding it and work towards the establishment of a single publicly funded school system.
Don't keep asking the leopard to change its spots.

Is anyone dusting off the dance floor?

I'm a little surprised I've seen so little discussion, ruminating, etc. on this so far this summer.
Every single K-12 education-sector contract in Ontario expires on Aug. 31.
Why aren't we more people talking about this?
I don't want to sound naive on this matter. I'm well aware that in every round of negotiations known to us in the past 15 to 20 years, nothing serious gets tabled until well after the last agreement has expired. Preliminary discussions on what the discussions will be about along with notices of intent to bargain likely haven't even been have been sent out yet (see here, here, with a H/T to Caroline Alphonso) across Ontario, given it's summer and all. Negotiations are a dance and so far I don't see anyone on the dance floor or even pushing the dust mop around to get it ready.
However, that shouldn't stop more of my media colleagues. Should it?
Let's consider a few things, aside from the fact B.C. teachers are on the picket lines over many of the same issues that could rear their heads in Ontario in the year ahead.

1. Bill 122 passed before the May election and it's now governing how the pending round of collective agreements will be negotiated. Which means a legislated and regulated series of central bargaining tables where all the big-money questions will be negotiated.
2. With the Liberals' election as a majority government, sanity may prevail and we won't see a resumption of the silliness that happened with the fall 2012 byelections and Bill 115 in an attempt to win a single seat. However you also didn't see an enthusiastic, blanket endorsement of the Liberals in the 2014 election as happened in 2011 and 2007.
3. Since re-election, the government has been quite clear (see its Metrolinx response) that no collective agreement will include more money. If there are wage and benefit increases, those amounts need be negotiated out of monies found elsewhere in the system.
4. Declining student enrolment has not disappeared as a real factor-- while most boards are seeing small rebounds in their youngest grades, all will still feel the real impact of fewer students. Particularly within a four-year high school program. Despite over a decade of declining enrolment, education funding in Ontario has continued to grow. There will be caps on spending and part of that may include job losses and rationalization of programs and services to match lower student populations. We need to let go of the false assumption there will be no job losses in our schools -- within a per-pupil funding and allotment system, there's no way to avoid these changes when the number of pupils drops. This is already happening and if you don't believe me ask your closest high school teacher how many surplus "lines" they have at their school for September.

This is a quick list. There are many other things to take into consideration with this round. Fro example, ETFO was given back (sort of) the wage parity its officers pissed away in 2008-12.
Given how ugly contracts were for the 2012-13 school year, is Ontario up for a repeat of this in 2014-15?  What levers get moved in which direction to keep K-12 sector spending within the government's own stated caps while rationalizing the system (particularly in secondary schools) for continued declining enrolment? Are both sides prepared for a Sunshine List release in 2015 that will show the largest-ever number of educators earning over six figures?
We need to start talking about this and the sooner the better.

The problem with most single-system analyses

Saw this tweeted by a trusted source Sunday morning, but HuffPo published an op-ed by Green Party of Ontario leader Mike Schreiner on March 15 regarding merging Ontario's four publicly funded school boards into two.
As readers here would know, I support this, with the full disclosure I am the product of a Catholic school system. However since becoming a ratepayer in southwestern Ontario, I am an English public school system supporter (for whatever that's worth in a single-funder system).
Schreiner's POV in this latest piece hasn't changed since the last Ontario election. He's consistently been a single-school system supporter since taking the mantle of the GPO. The challenge, however, is that Schreiner leads with the financial argument. That argument in this case is based on a 2012 study by the Federation of Urban Neighbourhoods of Ontario Inc.
There are some assumptions in that report upon which the estimated $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion (my rounding) in annual savings are based that are false. They appear to be based on a presumption that many of the students currently in Catholic schools would leave the publicly funded system.
That's the only guess I have as to how the study identifies efficiencies of scale to the extent it does. It pegs $164.9 million in savings from the elimination of school board and governance grants if the province's Catholic district school boards were eliminated. This assumes the public systems taking over management and governance of the physical assets and students would be willing to have that added to their existing workloads.
I don't see that happening.
So you wouldn't see 100% of those governance and admin costs evaporate.
It pegs $169 million in student transportation cost savings-- by increasing walking distances across the province and the elimination of duplication. Again, I don't see the savings fully realized as school board transportation consortium shotgun weddings started taking place over five years ago and are pretty much fully implemented.
Which isn't to say some of the estimates presented aren't valid-- savings will happen in capital and facilities as we use the existing stock of school buildings more efficiently instead of having wide discrepancies between public and Catholic schools that lie within blocks of each other.
Where the financial argument falls apart is the economies of scale line, where it estimates $487.9K to $813.2K in annual savings.
If the number of students in the system remains stable after the merger of Catholic and public boards, the overall costs of running the system are not going to dramatically drop. Yes, there will be savings in some areas where there is duplication-- but overall you're not going to suddenly have 40% fewer principals or superintendents. The number of teachers and support staff would remain relatively static.
It surprises me neither party in this example has bothered to look at Quebec or Newfoundland and Labrador, where systems were merged. What sort of savings have materialized? You might find some concrete examples there instead of assumptions built on false premises.
It's an argument that side-steps the conversation that should be happening around publicly funded faith-based education in Ontario. Which is whether it should be publicly funded at all. Arguing it shouldn't be funded because of potential, flawed estimated savings is a weak foundation because those "savings" simply won't materialize to the stated degree should Ontario move to a single system.
Ontario is no longer part of a dominion where a minority of Christians need to have their faith protected from being extinguished by the majority of Christians. Those days have long passed-- defense of any faith should be a matter of instruction and practice within individual families and whatever congregation they choose to associate with, not a publicly funded educational system.
That -- and not money -- should be the No. 1 reason for a single system in Ontario. I've not yet heard a politician frame it in those terms, which is unfortunate because the other arguments only distract from what should be discussed.

Three thoughts on Bill 122 committee hearings

Having read through the transcript of last week's committee hearing into Bill 122, there are only a few things that percolate to the surface for me as the legislation continues its move through the House.
The transcript is part of the bill's bundle of pages on the legislative website-- French-language skills will be useful as two of the deputations' remarks are in French as are a few of the questions asked afterwards. Kudos to the Globe and Mail and QP Briefing (owned by the Star) for having their reporters in the room. The focus of the Globe piece was heavy on conflict, of the potential for it even with this proposed bill in place.
With one exception (Clegg), I found the deputations' comments to be reasonable and pointed out the three things that percolated to the top for me.

1. That Bill 122 enshrine the Crown as one of the parties in any provincial negotiations. Most every deputation spoke to how the Crown ultimately sets the terms of how this bargaining will look and feel like but doesn't define itself as a member at the table. Given the province, through its ministry and budget, funds the vast majority of the monies used by boards to pay their employees and run our publicly funded school systems, this appears as a glaring oversight. I don't know if its omission was an attempt to keep the Crown from being defined in any way as an employer around those tables-- but given the school board associations (for better or worse) represent their members and the unions represent the employees to be covered the people at the table with the money to make it all happen work for the Crown. It should be a defined member of those negotiations.
2. That the central bargaining created by Bill 122 include all unionized employees who work within Ontario's schools. OSSTF, OECTA and CUPE spoke most strongly to these points, although they diverge slightly on the nuts and bolts of how each of the various smaller unions in the education sector could or should participate in central bargaining. Again, this is an oversight-- teachers' federations (who represent more than teachers) often steal the education-sector bargaining limelight. We in media tend to overlook and ignore the support workers, their contracts, their working conditions and such unless and until there's any job action. If central bargaining on key issues will be the law of the land for teachers' federations, then it should be so and include other unionized employee groups as well.
3. What should be discussed locally and centrally? Bill 122 proposes the government/Crown make this definition. The unions all pointed out that in free collective bargaining, the first item for discussion is to decide what is to be discussed. I'm undecided on where to sit on this question. Given the sole-funder question, I see a day where it wouldn't be too far-fetched a premise to have central bargaining deal with 100% of education sector agreements. We're a long way from this, but Bill 122 is an important step. If school board associations become more structured and transparent, government remains accountable to its citizenry and the unions remain accountable to their members, then you have three equal partners making decisions that are consistently applied in every publicly funded school. Unless funding control were to return to local boards and unions de-amalgamated, there wouldn't be two equal partners at the table in local bargaining-- which in part was what happened from 1998-2002/3, when provincial table officers from headquarters were assigned to every district for bargaining to achieve provincewide objectives while school boards had no similar support.

All of the above, and anything else to be said about Bill 122 whether you agree with this assessment or not, is moot unless the bill actually makes it to royal assent. Given the larger chess pieces at play, I don't have the confidence that will happen before the spring budget which may lead to an election. Further, the government isn't out there pumping up the fact this is one of the key bills it wants to see passed before the next budget.
If left on the order paper, what happens in a post-election scenario? In a change of government scenario, how would the impending round of collective agreements be dealt with? If the Liberals are returned to office in whatever form (minority/majority), do they pick up 122 and re-introduce it with the goal of a quick passing?
Unless there are some big changes, the next Ontario election won't be about education, it will be about the Liberals' track record on other files. Neither opposition party has yet shed its timidity when it comes to challenging this government on its education track record in a way that will resonate with voters. Their final platforms will prove otherwise, but overall silence from the third party, countered with a pledge to halt implementation of full-day kindergarten from the official opposition are not going to make education the ballot question.
Clause-by-clause consideration is scheduled for March 11-12 to start March 5 In the midst of a few other things going on, I'll read through those transcripts and come back with any additional thoughts afterwards.

Make that a numeracy and literacy secretariat

My feeds were full of math talk today, as Ontario Minister of Education Liz Sandals announced a series of responses to concerns over stagnant and declining assessment results on math.
The angst has been rising since the release of the 2012 PISA results late last year, showing that stagnation in achievement in math. It's existed longer than this however, as anyone paying attention to the full spread of EQAO results has been noticing for a number of years.
The Globe and Mail kicked off a recent spotlight on this angst by highlighting a series of petitions started across Canada to bring attention to the concern over how math is being taught and learned in K-12. I was sent a link to an Ontario petition last week. As of typing this, it still hadn't met change.org's threshold.
It's too easy to go too basic on this. Far too easy to call upon a few curmudgeonly people inside the ed sector and parents on its periphery, griping about how things aren't taught the way they used to be, how kids today are getting dumber, etc. That's low-hanging fruit and I would challenge my journalist colleagues to reach a little higher on this issue.
Unlike Sandals, I would say the curriculum in Ontario does need a refresh. Curriculum review is never a bad thing because we constantly evolve-- we learn more about how people learn, different and new ways of teaching to meet the increasingly varied needs of school-aged kids in our classrooms today (not to mention tomorrow and the year after that). I'm not saying the curriculum is broken, but keeping it current is never a bad thing.
I support the added investment in training teachers how to be better when they teach math-- it's one of the areas where the inadequacy of Ontario's teacher education shines through. I witnessed this first-hand three years ago while on my fellowship and auditing teacher-education classes at OISE. One of the courses I audited was a masters of teaching junior-intermediate cohort's trip through a 12-week course on literacy and numeracy. The first block was all numeracy and of the class of just over 25, only a few had math as their teachable subject.
The professor kept insisting and encouraging the remainder of the students not to tune her out, imploring them to challenge their own biases on math, the poor way they'd been taught and and to realize in today's job market, the first, second and third jobs they might get in a school could very well involve teaching math.
With a move to a two-year program in Ontario, teacher-education programs would serve their candidates and those candidates' future students well by spending far more time on math-teaching strategies for primary, junior and intermediate panel candidates. 
When I was working on my EQAO series in 2008, I also saw first-hand how the emphasis was on literacy and not numeracy. The provincial and local investments in literacy far, far outnumbered (ha!) what was being put into math. If you've had a kid in elementary school since the Liberals took office in 2003, you've likely heard of a literacy coach at your child(ren)'s school. Have they had a math coach? Probably not, since there are few of them.
I've told various Ministry of Education communications staffers over the years the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat was full of untold stories on how an investment in a particular area generates results over time. How it's done well with targeted investment and support of existing teachers through their school boards.
Despite its dual name, the LNS has been primarily focused on literacy.
The details of today's announcement don't specify whether the LNS will be a conduit for any of the money pledged by the minister. It exists and already has the structure to deploy this training and new resources-- it would be foolish to set up a completely separate body to administer this.
As to results? They won't be visible overnight as it takes time for any changes spurred by this announcement to be seen. If the investment is targeted correctly, those results should show it in the coming years.

And the next minister is?

With Kathleen Wynne's swearing in scheduled for Feb. 11, I haven't seen too much chatter on her choices for cabinet, other than some backing away from the cabinet table. With only 10 MPPs who supported her candidacy, if the premier-designate sticks to backroom-style politics those 10 could be up for some promotions.
In terms of those with cabinet experience under this government, here are some thoughts. Of the list, I would imagine, if I were in Wynne's shoes, I'd keep London North Centre's Deb Matthews at the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care. Perth-Wellington's John Wilkinson barely kept his seat in 2011 thanks to his term as environment minister coupled with rural reaction to wind-farm developments. However he could land back in cabinet in some other portfolio. I would imagine Glen Murray would slide back into research and innovation, if that ministry continues to exist. If not, Murray's strengths could see him in municipal affairs and housing or perhaps back at training, colleges and universities. Kingtson and the Islands' John Gerretsen has held a number of portfolios since 2003. Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale's Ted McMeekin only made it to cabinet in McGuinty's last shuffle, but Wynne has already indicated she wants to serve as premier and minister of agriculture and rural affairs for at least the first year.
Of course my interests are in education.
Given the current state of things due to Bill 115, education will continue to be a key political post. Many have said current minister Laurel Broten will be axed from the post and either demoted to a less-glamorous cabinet post or to the back bench. Broten didn't support Wynne in the race, but Wynne has said she won't rip up the contracts imposed under Bill 115. There could be merit in keeping Broten in the post at the beginning of this refreshed cabinet's term-- the education sector unions won't like it, but Broten might deserve the opportunity to find a way out of the mess that is in place right now.
Of the rest on the list of supporters, only Guelph's Liz Sandals draws my eye. Another former trustee turned MPP, Sandals was also the MPP who served as parliamentary / legislative assistant for a good chunk of the time that Wynne was minister. She then followed Wynne to transportation after that shuffle. She's not yet been in cabinet and this might finally be her time.
Outside of the list of supporters, Ottawa Centre's Yasir Naqvi has also done the parliamentary assistant gig (under Leona Dombrowsky) and as OLP president I've seen other writers muse his time in cabinet is due. The current PA is Mississauga-Streetsville's Bob Delaney, who like Sandals was first elected in 2003.
Any other suggestions?

Choosing an education premier

Ontario Liberal Party members will choose this province's next premier starting Jan. 25 in Toronto. As I did with the selection of a new Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario leader back in 2009, it's time to look at the six candidates for OLP leader and what their outlook on the government's second-largest expense is.
Straight off the top, this campaign's candidates feature experience in the portfolio not seen in any recent leadership campaigns provincially in quite some time. Gerard Kennedy was the Liberals' education critic before they won the election in 2003, jumping into the minister's seat until he stepped out of provincial politics to run for federal positions. Sandra Pupatello slid into the seat -- the leadership candidate education minister who ended up spending the least time in this portfolio. Then Kathleen Wynne, who has been the longest-serving education minister of this government's mandates.
Enough familiarity with the ministry to know its importance and how it runs, but at the same time each of those three has some distance from the government's more recent track record relating to things like Bill 13 and the painful round of contracts.
Summaries are based on keyword searches of each candidates' websites, as well as whether they've made any specific statements on education that have received coverage. The debates have dodged direct questions on Bill 115, which has left candidates to address that on their own terms and time. With the pending repeal of the bill, it also changes a little bit of the dynamic.
Anyway, onto the candidates, in alphabetical order.

Eric Hoskins

•  Hoskins has no particular education platform, other than motherhood and apple pie-type statements scattered throughout his various addresses and speeches.
• The most specific thing he says of interest to K-12 is a statement from back in December asking the government to hold off on implementing any contracts under Bil 115.

Gerard Kennedy

• Kennedy came out of the gate with perhaps the strongest education content as part of his campaign. As the first of the Liberal education ministers, it was under his tenure the first provincial discussion tables were held leading to the 2004-08 deals for teachers' unions. For those who forget, that was the Campaign 200 round of negotiations. He's not afraid to remind everyone of this since education was the only portfolio he held in the government.
• Kennedy has not shied away from saying Bill 115 was a mistake.He has a whole section (OK, one page) of his campaign site dedicated to his "plan for peace," which would tear up Bill 115. It was written back in December, but Kennedy is still saying this bill would be repealed and that bargaining between locals and their school boards would replace it, with provincial discussion tables being struck. I haven't seen, lately, whether he has strayed from this position now that contracts were imposed on OSSTF and ETFO. I'm not aware of whether or not he's committed to tearing up the imposed contracts (or all of them) and re-opening negotiations.

 Sandra Pupatello

• As Kennedy's successor in the portfolio, I've been surprised she doesn't tout her education experience more often than she has. As the only candidate I've personally seen speak (I covered her appearance in Brantford in December) during the campaign up to this point, she leads with jobs and economy and follows with community and social services, the portfolios she held after and before education. Her various "plan forwards" address education only in the Northern Ontario section, but address post-secondary more than K-12.
• Her only statement on the labour strife came in January, a plea to teachers to continue volunteering for extra-curricular activities. In its content, Pupatello states the circumstances leading to Bill 115 were regrettable, but doesn't convincingly state either way whether she'd repeal it or how she would deal with its continuing impact. It's a carefully worded statement that doesn't indicate how she'll handle the file if she wins the leadership.

 Charles Sousa

• Sousa actually has an education section to his platform, though I wish it said more on K-12. He mentions only encouraging entrepreneurship and labour-market focused career planning for high school students, as well as "protecting the integrity" of the Ontario Secondary School Diploma. Both of which could mean entirely different things depending on who you ask.
• He does, however, kick off his education page by thanking McGuinty's leadership on the file.

 Harinder Takhar

• I hadn't expected to find as much K-12 content as I did on his campaign website. Scouring through the place however, Takhar has some pointed, interesting elements that touch on K-12, more than the candidates alphabetically ahead of him on this list.
• From the fiscal side, on his road map to eliminate the deficit, Takhar picks up on the declining student enrolment vs. increasing numbers of non-teaching / non-classroom staff in the system (straight out of the Drummond Report), saying he'd find $600 million a year in reducing this number through attrition and retirements over three years. He also would find $200 million in rationalizing full-day kindergarten through student-staff ratios and staffing based more on Pascal's recommended model than the one that's being implemented. That was also, more or less, straight out of Drummond.
• In a few sections, such as the Northern Ontario one, he mentions school accommodation guidelines to accommodate smaller populations-- which I thought many already did.
• On the labour front, he commits to meeting with unions, "while keeping in mind the financial realities faced by the province at this time."

Kathleen Wynne

• As the candidate who's spent the longest period of time in the education minister's portfolio, one should expect she would have a beefy section in her platform on education. Let's remember that full implementation of the primary class size initiative, the negotiation of the 2008-12 round of education-sector contract (and standing up to ETFO when it stayed away from the PDT for too long, losing its members wage parity with their colleagues) and the start of FDK all came under her term as minister. She's also the only candidate who has experience as a trustee and school board chair (TDSB, prior to her election as MPP).
• Her "The way we learn" section, while brief, contains substantive points on curriculum review, student achievement, parental engagement, early learning, experiential education (co-ops, apprenticeships, etc.), school board governance and most interestingly to me, establishing a Premier's Youth Advisory Council -- a concept not seen in Ontario since Bob Rae was premier. Also, a commitment to Aboriginal education by working with the feds to share the province's experience in K-12.
• There's a commitment to sit down with "education partners" to strengthen the bargaining process at provincial and local levels, but that's not enough detail for someone wondering how she would handle the impact of Bill 115's imposed contracts.

 Overall, with a few surprises, I'm quite disappointed at the lack of substantive material posted to candidates' websites or public statements regarding education. In many cases, education commentary focuses on post-secondary, not K-12. I'm not surprised by this, as K-12 is not the sexy element you sell your platform with in the midst of a headline-grabbing dispute between the current administration and its unions.

More importantly, the lack of substance on K-12 is troubling. Elementary and secondary schooling is the province's second-largest expense after health care costs. It's a government-funded service, like health care, that everyone uses at some point in their lives, often at multiple points (first as students and then as parents).
To those who are part of the process of selecting the new leader and who care about K-12, choose carefully. I hope the information above helps.

2012 year in review

As I noted at the end of my summative post for 2011, bargaining would be a huge issue in 2012 and as the year unfolded that proved to be true. It wasn't an exceedingly difficult prediction to make -- the 2008-12 contracts would expire, the government's new tack on fiscal austerity and a Liberal bench finding its way through minority government.
As of midnight yesterday, there was no overall resolution to dozens of contracts between elementary and secondary teachers working in public school boards, not to mention those support staff working across all school boards. not to mention some support staff working in schools (a template agreement was reached with CUPE on Dec. 31). With the new year now well underway, the question many are pondering is whether this minister and government will use the powers in Bill 115 to impose contract conditions on those in the sector who haven't settled or whether she will call any striking folk back to work as permitted under the same bill.
Personally, I'm left scratching my head as to how anyone gets to a resolution in this mess.
The unions are slowly painting themselves into a corner where their actions will only further alienate the public support they will need in order to minimize the impact of this battle on their members. If this province heads into an election in 2013 without some sort of resolution and job action continues, despite all their bravado the unions won't gain enough support to elect a government friendly to their demands.
Even if the contentious portions of Bill 115 are repealed, the government's fiscal goals haven't changed. It will still want to contain the massive liability of banked sick days and retirement gratuities for those school boards that offered them up to this point. It will still seek to eliminate the two-day-a-month sick day provisions and replace it with an amount closer to what people actually take, backed up by a short-term disability program.
It will still also seek to move towards provincial bargaining -- which, frankly, should have happened back in 1998 when the current district school boards were created and educational funding consolidated at the provincial level.
The government doesn't get off scot-free either. 
By poisoning bargaining right from the start, it did make it quite clear it wasn't willing to budge on its goals. It joined the unions in the war of rhetoric, making it easy to get distracted. This wasn't about wages. It's about long-tail liabilities and controlling the sector. Yet, to this day, the government line remains about teachers not wanting to take a pay cut, which is beyond false.
Caught in the middle, as always, are students. Being used as pawns, being abused as those impacted by any job action.
Bargaining would be the defining matter in education for the past 12 months, but that's not to suggest there weren't others. Here are a few to provide some fodder for reflection and discussion:

• Accommodation: This one does not go away. In 2012, another high-profile attempt -- this time in Peterborough -- to derail the decision made by a local school board. Another failure to understand that ministry reviews and judicial reviews are not appeals and cannot reverse a decision made by a group of local trustees. The rebound in declining enrolment is just getting underway in many districts. Many will point to this rebound as justification for maintaining the status quo-- but to do so is ignorant of what any good demographer will tell you. This rebound (which will take another eight to 10 years to begin hitting secondary schools) will be longer and smaller than previous baby booms. Which means it won't make up for the existing vacancies in our schools that will need to be rationalized sooner than this increase will start hitting high schools. This won't go away in 2013 either-- keep an eye on brewing situations in Kingston, London and maybe even, finally, in Toronto.
• GSAs: Long forgotten by now due to the labour unrest, this was a defining issue for the first quarter of the year. One of the only bills that received Royal assent before the summer break, Bill 13 was supposed to fix all bullying in our schools. Or something like that, I now mutter facetiously. The government started the year battling some faith-based groups and parents who objected to having gay straight alliances become a mandatory part of schools. Lost in the bigger discussion over what these support groups should be called was whether the name alone makes any real differences in school cultures and how they deal with harassment.
• See ya later, education premier: In a move that surprised many at the time, Dalton announced in October he will step down as party leader and premier once the Ontario Liberal Party elects a new leader in late January. So comes to an end a nine-year stretch where, for the most part, the government was quite friendly to the sector-- increasing funding by billions as student enrolments dropped by about six per cent. The legacy's being defined by his last few months, but as I argued when the announcement was made, McGuinty's legacy is larger than that. I would think in time, his term will be compared to that of Bill Davis. 

The past year was an exceedingly quiet one for this blog. It's my oft-neglected labour of love, supplemented somewhat by a tumblr feed but a shade of what it was in its first year. I do much of my opining on educational issues over Twitter, which provides an instant-gratification vehicle to express thoughts. I'm not a big new year's resolution person, but I would like to make carving out more time to write in this space a goal for the coming 12 months.
In the meantime, this tiny little blog approaches 100,000 page views as it enters its fourth year in March. Thanks to those who've stopped by and particularly to those who have been longtime readers.

Time to reconsider extracurriculars

As the fallout from Bill 115 continues across Ontario, I've had this conversation a number of times with colleagues and friends. It's time to reconsider how extracurricular activities are offered in our community schools.
Currently, running an extracurricular requires the presence of a paid school-board employee. That's usually a teacher, but can also be a support staff member depending on the activity. This applies whether it's in the elementary or secondary panel, whether it's a sports team or other athletics, after-school club or something that usually takes place during school hours at lunch or recess breaks. Even if the employee isn't directly running the activity in question, her or his presence is required even in an advisory role for the activity to be able to function.
In contractual disputes -- legitimate or otherwise -- education-sector unions usually push their members to withdraw from these voluntary activities. In one swift move, there are no extracurriculars in schools across the province. No sports, no clubs, no after-school help, etc.
Here's the part that doesn't make sense and should really be addressed.
There are plenty of other qualified adults in school communities who could run these activities just as competently (or even more) than school staff members. In many places, these people are already involved in those activities. It's not at all uncommon in high school sports, for example, to see community volunteers coaching or assistant coaching with the presence of a teacher adviser.
Currently, with the work-to-rule campaigns and other moves, these activities are defunct-- even in those situations where there are qualified volunteers willing and able to run them.
The most-often cited reason for these activities being cancelled even with willing and qualified volunteers is liability for school boards and supervision requirements that are built into school board policies. However, these activities, as any union is only too quick to remind us, are voluntary. Even the Education Act does not make them a mandatory part of the job description.
So a voluntary activity, through policy and a lack of momentum to think about other ways of organizing it, can only be run, de facto, by the very same people whose unions remind us again and again their members volunteer for the activity.
What a brilliant way of controlling these activities so they can be cancelled during a labour dispute, only hurting the very students everyone keeps saying they care so much about.
Given we appear to be far from a scenario where these activities are made part of a school board staffer's paid work day, let's open them up to all qualified volunteers in our communities. Screen them, make them sign a piece of paper if you need to deal with liability concerns, make them accountable to principals (where community volunteers are in schools they already do report to administrators).
Aside from allowing these activities to carry on regardless of contractual issues, it also removes a huge bargaining chip from unions and firmly places these activities into the voluntary field, where withdrawal of service has not one iota of influence over contracts.
Do 'em if you wish, don't do them if you don't. By truly and meaningfully opening them up to qualified community volunteers it wouldn't make a difference.

Legacies

After the surprise move by Premier Dalton McGuinty Monday, I've been left wondering as someone whose interest in education has come to fruition in years dominated by his mandate, what McGuinty's legacy to K-12 education in Ontario should be.
There are many who were pouring their thoughts onto social media Monday, particularly from the education sector, who were only too eager to take credit for McGuinty's decision to resign and, frankly, crap all over his record on this file. Certainly, 2012 has not been the year where McGuinty has endeared himself to the education sector.

• A budget passed in February that made it clear there would be no increases outside of the government's chosen priorities -- full-day kindergarten chief among them -- and decreases to other budgets to accommodate the necessary growth in spending for those priorities.
• Acrimonious labour relations with sector unions and federations, starting immediately from the first discussions where the government walked in with bankruptcy lawyers.
• A controversial memorandum of understanding with the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association signed in July. 
• A dubious move to apply the provisions of that MOU across the entire sector through Bill 115-- which, having received Royal assent, does not disappear with McGuinty's resignation. It has been challenged in court by all unions and federations for the limits it places on job action. It would take an NDP majority or a court ruling to rescind that legislation.

To lose sight of what was done by this government under McGuinty's mandate is incredibly short-sighted however and the apparent abandonment of the Liberals by those in the sector should be continually reconsidered depending on what happens in the months ahead.
This government took a sector that was reeling from two terms of Progressive Conservative rule (and still bitter from one term of NDP government) and buttressed it through decisions that saw the education ministry's budget grow dramatically from 2003-12. That's budget growth that continues, by the way, in the face of the provincial deficit and continued declining student populations that have seen an average drop of two per cent per year in the number of bums in seats in schools across the province.
Let's review.

• The Good Places to Learn program invested billions into school renewal projects. Long-deferred building and maintenance projects that school boards had been putting off to solve budget crunches were funded, on a somewhat priority basis. Chances are your neighbourhood school today has up-to-date boilers, windows, life-safety systems and other building elements because of this program.
• The 2003 education platform centred on the primary class size initiative. Regardless of your personal view on the impact of smaller class sizes on student achievement, this was a crucial investment in primary education in Ontario. It allowed many, many elementary school teaching positions to continue to exist at the exact moment many boards across the province were facing a drop in elementary student populations. This initiative also came with capital dollars that led to construction in schools provincewide.
• The province also requested a moratorium (mostly followed) on school closures until its new pupil accommodation guidelines were in place. There's too much to be said about that process to fit into this post, but I argue it's a better, if still at times flawed, process than what was in place beforehand-- where boards who couldn't earn new pupil place funding were strapped to address shifting populations in growth areas and schools were closed to create the pupil-place funding needed to build new ones.
• The 2004-08 teachers agreements, following the first provincial discussion table outcomes, saw investments in things that federations wanted in addition to provincial priorities. Thank this agreement for minor increases in specialty teachers in the elementary panel, increased prep time for elementary teachers, student success teachers in secondary schools, professional development funding and a generous wage and benefit increase.
• The literacy and numeracy secretariat came into its own during this mandate and frankly, so did the Education Quality and Accountability Office. Not to mention the Ontario Teachers' College, which in this mandate not only saw control shift to union-elected members on the board, but also became fully responsible for sanctioning teacher-education programs.
• The New Teacher Induction Program replaced the PC's teacher certification and re-certification initiatives with one built on mentorship and practical application of the skills new teachers need to be successful.
• The 2008-12 agreements for the entire sector cannot be simply ignored now. At a time when the current deficit was in its infancy, the agreements gave good wage and benefit increases. While not necessarily the case for support staff, teachers in this province earn a fair wage given their education and experience and are among the best-paid in Canada and North America. These agreements also built on the improvements from the 2008-12 round.
• Lastly, in the big-stuff roundup, full-day kindergarten. Against the advice of his own adviser, McGuinty chose to have a full-time teacher lead each of these classes (again maintaining and creating positions that continued to be threatened by declining student populations). This continues to be an unprecedented investment in early learning both in terms of people (teachers and early childhood educators) and buildings. Costs will run to $2 billion in capital and almost as much in annual operating and it's unclear heading into a new election at some point where the other parties stand on fully implementing this program.

Which isn't to say they hit all the right notes until 2012.

• The early promise of a whole-scale revision of the education funding formula was never completed. Substantive changes to the formula have been made since 2003, but its foundations weren't dramatically altered.
• A number of omnibus bills were passed that continued to centralize control of education at Queen's Park and the ministry offices on Bay Street.
• A diversion into matters of character education and social engineering that has been controversial and distracted many from other issues in education.

A legacy should be evaluated taking the long view, not the short one. While one's final acts can serve to define a legacy, they don't tell the whole story. For those in K-12, we're now left with the task of weighing the full scale of this legacy against the legacies of others (such as they remain) and the proposals of those who wish to replace this government.

Unsure where the pressure lies

I read the Globe's piece earlier this week, interested to see the reference to the so-called B-memo to school boards on bargaining.
The Globe says:

The memo suggests that school boards could be facing a provincial takeover if they do not sign teacher contracts within the next six weeks, consequences a government spokesman would neither confirm nor deny.

However, having read the memo (and possible the Globe got a different version), I don't see what's there to be so bold as to say cabinet is ready over the order paper to start taking control of school boards.
From the memo, also quoted by the Globe:

In addition to being balanced, budgets must be financially sustainable over the longer term. This means local bargaining outcomes must align with the provincial funding framework.
Concluding local bargaining outcomes outside the terms of the provincial funding framework would raise concerns about a board's ability to meet its financial obligations, at which point the Minister could (my emphasis) decide to exercise her powers as set out in the Education Act, to put the board on more sustainable footing.

Nor do I see the memo suggesting the boards have their collective agreements signed before the start of the school year. I do see reference to ensuring the school year starts and continues, which to me is more of a suggestion that boards not lock out their employees. They're asked to advise on the status of negotiations by Aug. 1, but there's nothing in the memo saying the deals have to be signed before the beginning of the school year.
If anything, this memo is a shot across the federations' bow, in addition to a warning to school boards.
The province pays you. They fund you. Don't break the bounds of the funding rules they've laid out for you. Federations choosing (this time, with concessions on the table) not to engage in the discussion table process and solely engaging in local bargaining hope to outmuscle school boards many of whom cannot hope to match the federations' co-ordinated approach.
(As I mentioned in a comment earlier, funny the federations without agreements are all pissy this time with concessions on the table. They didn't seem to have those issues when the cash was flowing freely at the discussion tables in the last two rounds.)
For boards that might consider taking money out of provincial funding envelopes to cover items their unions want and the province isn't funding, this memo sets it out clearly-- fund above what we set out at your own risk.

This government likes to talk

As a followup to the last post on the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association (OECTA) memorandum of understanding (MOU) comes news the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation (OSSFT) and the French-language teachers' union have re-entered discussions with the government.
Only the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO) and those in the sector represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) maintain their decision to walk away from the provincial discussion tables. One hopes the ETFO membership has not forgotten they lost wage parity in the 2008-12 contract because of the stubbornness of their provincial executive and that this dynamic doesn't happen again.
Over the almost nine years this government has been in office, it's proven a few things in how it talks and the actions that follow.
The Liberals like to talk. They float trial balloons like there's no tomorrow. They have a particular penchant for governing by regulation-- meaning they can say all sorts of things when the legislation is on the floor at Queen's Park but then change tone quite dramatically by the time regulations are approved by cabinet and published in the Gazette.
They like to talk tough. No more of this. So much for that.
But in the last round of tough talk, as arbitration agreements started stacking up against their attempts to implement freezes and clawbacks in some part of the broader public sector, they backed down and compromised. The opposition, as is its right, seized upon these eventual agreements as signs the Liberals are too soft, don't have the turpitude to govern, etc.
Kudos to OECTA for staying at the PDT. Just like it did for the 2008-12 contracts, the federation realized it had more to gain by continuing discussions than by huffing and guffawing to itself in the corner. The MOU is the result, with clauses that will likely see any improved items in other agreements fall into its lap as well.
I don't buy the suggestion tying the willingness to keep discussions moving to suggestions in QMI papers and elsewhere the union did so because of negative reaction to Catholic school boards' positions on Bill 13 and gay-straight alliances. Particularly since OECTA proudly stated its own members supported the legislation and the label. Or the notion that being the first to ink an MOU was aimed at sustaining the publicly funded Catholic school system in Ontario-- those teachers would still teach under a single system, even if they had different representation and different employers. The Bill 13 and single-system issues are ones for trustees and bishops, not the rank-and-file who benefit from this deal.
Returning to my main point, those who continue to talk to this government get agreements. Agreements where the government moves from its publicly stated objectives and directives. This has been proven time and again, with the government being patient enough to wait for everyone to come back to the table.
ETFO lost in the last round because it held out trying to punish or make a point against the government. It's convinced it can do so again. The others, while as bold on that podium on July 6, seem to realize there's always value in going back to the table.
This government likes to talk-- and those who keep talking with it tend to reach a deal.

Wishing, and hoping... for an unlikely moratorium

After all the time I've spent monitoring and reporting on this beat, I can't help but continue to be surprised by how every community re-invents the wheel when it comes to the question of school closures.
Here's an example (just one) from Niagara Region, where an MPP is calling for yet another moratorium on school closures. I also look at sites such as the Peterborough-based Save Local Schools and wonder. A May 12, supposedly provincewide rally against the existing school-closure process in this province saw a grand total of eight communities participate (Cambridge, Cobourg, Hamilton, Kingston, Norwood, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Sudbury and Welland), with only six school districts therein.
Missing?
Ottawa, where the question of closing under-capacity schools in the city's urban core and the constant demand for more accommodation in the exurbs has yet to be comprehensively addressed, particularly within the public school board.
Toronto, which continues to have the highest vacancy rate in the province but has kept avoiding the massive slate of school closures and consolidations for a variety of reasons.
Anywhere further north than Sudbury-- because many of these boards have already done several rounds of closures and consolidations and people are living with the consequences of that time. As they are in rural eastern Ontario (Upper Canada DSB, I'm looking at you) as well as comprehensive swaths of midwestern and southwestern Ontario.
Many of their points have merit-- district school boards are not as small as the township and city -- or the county -- boards they replaced. The review process isn't an appeal and no one in government (or out of it) seems to be willing to strip a district school board of one of the few responsibilities that still lies entirely within its domain-- pupil accommodation. Overwhelmingly, however, this opposition is rooted in the status quo, NIMBYism and the reluctance to accept any change.
This is not going away. There will be no moratorium. The harsh reality is that there are plenty of schools in Ontario built in the 1950s and 1960s (or earlier) with too many vacant pupil places. It appears 2012-13 and beyond are finally the time when Ontario's Ministry of Education will live up to its often-issued threat to cut declining enrolment grants. These grants have allowed many school boards to postpone the drastic changes they needed to make in order to right-size the facilities in their districts. They're going away.
Which means (with credit to former Thames Valley DSB director of education John Thorpe) there are difficult choices to make. There will increasingly be two choices: Fund the buildings you have today to keep as many of them open as possible with nothing left over to modernize them. Or you decide to spend less on your bricks and mortar-- close, consolidate, renovate, bring as many facilities up to modern standards as possible to run them as efficiently as possible and spend all those savings on programs.
To those who would advocate the status quo, which will it be?

Dance with the one that funds you

As of this week, by my count, only one (two?) teachers' federation remains at the provincial discussion table with the Ontario Ministry of Education. Only the Ontario English Catholic Teaches' Association (OECTA) and maybe one of the French-language teachers' unions remain at the table.
For those catching up, the PDTs are the vehicle by which the bulk of collective agreements in the K-12 education sector in Ontario have been settled since the Liberals took office in 2003. It's one way of settling the big questions revolving around money and provincewide working conditions at a single table, producing a template shell of an agreement that can be taken back to the 72 publicly funded school boards to finalize local issues and ratify.
Though the Liberals have approached the PDTs in a different way for each round of contracts, they have until now produced good contracts for teachers and other people working in the education sector as per-pupil spending has surpassed $10,000 per student.
It's the PDTs that have given teachers good contracts. So good, as I've written before, that those at the top of their grids will be on the so-called Sunshine List in either 2013 of 2014 by way of simple compound mathematics.
As written in May 2009;

Anyone making $88K in those employee groups on Aug. 31, 2008, just signed a deal in the last nine months that will see them reach $100K by 2012. Meaning in either 2013 or 2014, they'll be on the Sunshine List too.

I make no apologies-- but for a classroom teacher that's a very good compensation package. In Ontario, teachers and other workers in the education sector are fairly compensated for their educational and work-experience backgrounds.
PDTs also make sense because since 1998, the province funds almost all of the revenues received by a school board. While the step of full-on provincial bargaining has never actually happened, you're living in a fantasy world if you don't think the federations haven't been bargaining provincially for years. The routine appointment of a provincial table officer at all local negotiations is only the first proof of this.
At the PDT, the federations, school boards and government would come to an agreement on what would be funded and what the money would be used to accomplish. It's been successful and has drawn attention around the world for how to set goals and then orient an entire sector to reach for them.
This year, the province publicly launched negotiations by stating all the things it wouldn't do-- give raises in the first two years, allow for anyone to climb the grid, etc. Here's the thing though-- even with those take-it-or-leave-it public statements, the money available (though continually directed at provincial priorities) isn't dropping. Job losses in the sector are due almost entirely to declining enrolment, not cuts to specific programs-- though specific programs are under the gun where there are not enough students to support them.
This government has a knack for making bold statements in public, but then sitting down and working out a deal. The federations have run away from that table -- perhaps hoping a "me too" clause can save whatever deal is worked out with those who remain behind.
This whole thing is a long dance-- negotiations always are -- and it's far from over as I don't expect any labour issues until at least September, but 2013 would be a safer bet.
The federations that have walked away may be counting on public sympathy, but after eight generous years, it's doubtful they'll find in in the same way they did during previous government tenures.
Further, while the employer of record is still the local school board, my faith that local boards will negotiate to pay for things with money they haven't been given is non-existent.
The smart thing here is to come back to the table and keep talking. You gotta keep the dance going or risk being left outside the dance hall when the band and rental contract are signed for another four years-- just ask the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, who managed to lose parity for walking away in 2008-09.

Peterborites take notice

Peterborough College and Vocational School (PCVS) supporters have had a buoyant few weeks.
As followers of the time line for the school would know, it was recently spoken about on CBC Radio Q on March 29. That was the week the nation learned PCVS students and their community had -- in an initiative at least one supporter took pains to tell me over twitter was NOT related to ongoing save-PCVS advocacy -- won the "Spread the Net" challenge.
Which earned the school a coveted spot on the Rick Mercer Report's season finale last week where he even, mirroring the rant done by the current student council president, ranted about it. Bravo. A coincidentally orchestrated collision of gushing media coverage that while not really about the school closing was really and entirely about the opposition that remains to that school closing. That was impressive.
Unfortunately, and particularly when under the gun or after the decision's been made to close a school, many many many schools are fantastic and the greatest schools ever where people are encouraged to be all they can be and no one is ever bullied and every course that anyone ever wants to take is offered ... and... and... so on. While PCVS is impressive for all these things, its heritage and more, it's not unique in those respects. It's not every school, but it's not the only school.
Call me jaded and skeptical or stupid or whatever. For over three years I've been reading and learning about every school closure in this province that got even an ounce of media coverage and even covered a few myself. The wheel has been reinvented so many times on how communities react and plan on this I've lost count. Just tonight I was monitoring a storyline in St. Catharines / Thorold seemingly headed in exactly the same direction as this Peterborough decision.
'Twas shortly before this supporters learned of facilitator Joan Greene's report, completed after the community petitioned the decision of the Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB trustees made in September. It found two "technical" violations of the KPRDSB's own accommodation review guidelines, but not enough to warrant recommending the board repeat the review.
The community is now banking on the publicity earned by its recent showcases and amassing dollars for a judicial review of the board's decision. While I seriously, seriously doubt it will be successful in overturning the decision (based exclusively on not having learned of a successful judicial-review reversal yet after some extensive research), I plead with anyone interested in this situation to take heed. Temper your expectations.
Be very, very aware of what a judicial review can and cannot accomplish. Search for and read through the many, many posts here in this space regarding Niagara District Secondary School in Niagara-on-the-Lake. They went through the judicial review process after waiting too long and as a result the request was quashed. No sense reviewing what has already proceeded too quickly and substantially along to reverse.
I'm no lawyer, but if the fundraising target is met and the decision is made to proceed, the moment after that application for judicial review is filed it might be prudent to file a series of applications for injunctions. One to stop PCVS from closing until the judicial review is either complete or the application is rejected by the court. Another to pause the work -- renovations, etc. -- being done at the receiving school, Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School (TASSS). The fact this work has continued helps put several nails in the coffin.
I don't fault the board for moving forward. It has to or else no school board anywhere would ever be able to close a school and plan for what happens next. A process that already takes 18 months to two years would never end. Given the province seems to finally be getting serious about ending the perpetual declining-enrolment adjustment grant, this is a scenario, along with other school closures, that will repeat itself. Unless, of course, we all starting having many more babies and find a way to also magically and instantly create a bunch of eight-to-12-year-olds kids.
Speaking of planning for what happens next, PCVS supporters need to be prepared for all outcomes. Life goes on and appropriate attention needs to be paid to ensure students are taken care of next year and the year after and after. Don't short the PCVS students of today by refusing to accept the school will close in June and its students will be accommodated at TASSS in the fall. Then you're only creating the self-sustaining storyline. Suggestions on local media comment boards that save-PCVSers discouraged students from completing course-selection properly for the fall are simply discouraging to read even when I doubt it may have happened.
PCVS may very well be the best school ever. But if a judicial review doesn't keep it that way, then students deserve only the same, very best in their receiving schools.

Drummoned?

Though the speculation today is all about what changes may be coming to the healthcare system (delisting things from OHIP, etc.), I have no doubt the players in our provincial education system are watching carefully.
The reports came out earlier this month across all media about consultant Don Drummond's pending report to the McGuinty government with its cost-containment recommendations. As health and education are (in that order) the province's biggest bills, keeping an eye on how the overall report is released and its recommendations received is important for both sectors.
What did we learn earlier this month?
The biggest ed-related item was a call for the province to re-evaluate its primary class size (PCS) program. As most familiar with it would know, this investment in education came out of the Liberals' first mandate, when it was a centrepiece of the party's education platform. With the odd exception here or there within a handful of years, 90% of the province's kindergarten through Grade 3 classes had ratios of 20 students to one teacher. The remaining 10% had a hard cap of no more than 23 students to one teacher.
That ratio changed a bit in the early years / kindergarten classes as full-day kindergarten gets rolled out across the province, as it allows up to 26 students to one teacher and one early childhood educator.
The edu-academics were all over the PCS from when it was first announced -- as were some school boards who identified they would have issues with providing the necessary physical classroom space. The research is, to be fair, varied on class size vs. other factors when it comes to student improvement. Fewer than 20 students with a poorly trained teacher do worse than 30 students with a well-trained teacher, etc.
The PCS always sold well with parents however. Parents who vote. Who were tired of seeing a blended class size average in elementary of 26 (with boards being allowed to push that to 27 under some circumstances). Some of that excitement faded with the increase in split-grade classes caused when PCS was implemented, but a big portion of that was how the system reacted to a class cap combined with overall declining enrolment.
Will it become the sacrificial lamb to squeeze money out of education spending? I'm doubtful a government led by a premier who has long fashioned himself as an "education premier" would start hacking away at one of the key parts of the platform that won him a first majority government.
Similarly, most new funding in education is being directed at FDK implementation-- something all three parties supported in the campaign, so it's doubtful there'll be many chainsaws taken to that program unless people change their tunes (again).
Something that didn't come out? Both the PCS and FDK initiatives have helped stem job losses in the ranks of teachers as they bolstered staffing in years that declining enrolment was having its biggest impact. That population decline is now set to move through high schools twice as fast as it moved through the K-8 panel-- and with all of the Learning to 18 programs now fully implemented, there won't be many new programs to save jobs when the student numbers are no longer there to support them.
Given it's doubtful the province will ask its education-sector employee federations to agree to zero-increase contracts, the path ahead for the Liberals may be in trying to balance the expected decline in staffing (particularly in secondary) with any increases in wages and benefits. Keep it at a net-zero level and you can make it through a mandate without allowing education spending to balloon.
More on this once Drummond's recommendations go public.

Looking in both directions

Here's to looking back at 2011 and looking ahead to 2012 in the world of K-12 education in this province, as well as a chance to reflect on what's been in this space in the last 12 months. As I wrote about for my employer, 2011 was a year of change from the fellowship back to my former job to a new post starting in August.
In the past year this space has seen just over 3,800 visitors, a slight majority of whom had been here at least once before. Traffic was highest in the winter and early spring when the fellowship granted lots of time for posting and waned throughout the rest of the calendar year as I went back to work (bad blogger, bad).
Here were the posts that drew the largest audiences:

1. Full-day kindergarten = ECE shortage? (a post from 2009)
2. Keep those EQAO envelopes sealed
3. Mapping our Full-day Kindergarten
4. Bil 177 (another post from 2009)
5. Ontario's next education minister is (noting my guesses were all wrong)
6. On teaching (from 2010)
7. A thought on teacher education and the job market (another from 2010)
8. DSBN Academy coverage keeps growing
9. My long goodbye to OISE
10. Defenders of the faith(-based)

When 40% of the most-viewed posts are not from the immediate past year, it's a signal to me I need to be posting more in this space. Alas, I have been negligent in living up to the promise of its purpose when it was launched in early 2009. I've reflected on just how I was able to do it then-- I would come home at whatever hour and commit to writing at least one new post a day. If it wasn't comment on coverage elsewhere, it would be original opinion, analysis or outright reporting. My posts on Bill 177 and Bill 242 are among very few that look at the legislation that are out there, and both keep drawing traffic.
Here's my cut of the top issues in K-12 Ontario education of 2011:

• Bullying became the worst thing ever about any school system this year. Unfortunately helped by a number of well-publicized suicides where this harassment was either known or suspected to be the primary cause, along with the politicization of Gay-Straight Alliances as some sort of bullying cure-all, bullying has been on everyone's tongue throughout the year. I'm curious as to whether it will result in meaningful action in 2012.
• School accommodation / demographic shift continues, though not as noisily in most areas of the province as it has in the last few years. Many boards outside the GTA have tackled their first few rounds of school-closure reviews, petitions and post-review openings. The Toronto boards also began tackling this, though not as assertively as they probably need to in order to keep up. Towards the end of the year the Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School decision raised eyebrows (and the dander of many) showing accommodation issues are by no means ever a dead issue.
• A new minister came to the portfolio in October after the scrappy Leona Dombrowsky was sent into political retirement by the voters in Belleville and area. Laurel Broten was appointed minister to the surprise of many (or maybe just me) after previous stints in Environment and Children and Youth Services. She's been pushed with the reaction to Bill 13, but like every minister since Sandra Pupatello and her predecessor Gerard Kennedy, the steps out of the spotlight to allow Premier Dalton McGuinty to fulfill his "education premier" desire.
• Full-day kindergarten continues to drive the education agenda provincially. Though the 2011-12 crop of new schools is the smallest cohort of the five years, the issue of before- and after-school care for four- and five-year-olds isn't settled across the province. Its popularity even drove the PC Party of Ontario leader Tim Hudak to do a 180 on the program, going from labelling it another Liberal Cadillac program to saying he would support implementation as proposed. While the components of the original Pascal Report flowing from FDK for 6-12-year-olds were part of the Liberals' election platform, rollout timing is indeterminate in this minority Parliament.

In a similar vein, here are some thoughts on what should be tracked in the coming twelve months:

• Money will be key to everything in 2012-- the province's debt and deficit will become a focus of the pending provincial budget. While no one in opposition would likely defeat a budget based on health care or education spending (which will likely be almost 3/4 of all provincial spending), those in the know are well aware that every passing year will be a bigger budget challenge. New spending on capital projects will by and large be to support implementation of full-day kindergarten. There will likely be a kitty to tap into for employee contracts (more on that below) and some token amounts to keep up with rising utility and other non-staffing costs, but the years of pilfering to support old buildings over programs and people in those buildings are coming to an end and boards that are supporting too many older buildings or vacant pupil places will have a tough time tackling 2012-13 budgets in June.
• The bullying theme will stubbornly stick around-- a Liberal minority in the legislature may very well capitulate on controversial sections of Bill 13 in committee if it wishes to see the bill come back for third reading before the legislature rises for the summer break. This will serve as the next step in the premier's initiative to get character development further entrenched into the curricula.
• Just for kicks, it might be worth tracking whether election-campaign promises, such as the wraparound programming for 6-to-12-year-olds, the two-year teachers' college and the one or two others get implemented in the coming year.
• Finally, I do think the contracts will be an issue in this year. They do expire on Aug. 31, after all. I would have a litter of kittens if any agreements of significance were ratified (at provincial discussion tables or locally) before the end of this calendar year however. I don't believe any of the parties have given big signals on priorities for the next agreement -- other than the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario trying to reach the parity their executive pissed away in the standoff over the 2008-12 agreements. The back half of this year will likely, particularly after annual meeting season in the summer, feature an entrenchment as the various unions and federations stake out what they think a minority Liberal government can get them and the Liberals mark their turf. I wouldn't expect any battle stations to be manned until some time between March Break and summer vacation 2013 though.

 This space has been less in 2011. All the same, thanks to those who stop by searching for something and those who continue to read and comment on the posts. At some point in the coming months the blog will see its 30,000th visitor and though small as far as the web goes, that's better than I could have predicted when I started doing this.

Charts and more charts

The Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School folk forwarded me an interesting chart this week.
It didn't convert well to GoogleDocs, but I've posted the .xlsx document there anyway.
As the rallies continued before a board meeting Thursday, this document is being circulated.
If I've interpreted its aim correctly -- and I didn't ask for clarification -- the idea here is to shift the closure of a Peterborough school between the options available to the school-closure review committee and trustees as the latter chose an administrative recommendation to axe PCVS.
Shift which school closes and the numbers change.
Play with the number of students -- and from what the chart shows only one such survey has been conducted -- that might leave the Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB and go to the Catholic system (which from what I can tell has no comparable arts program) and the numbers on the rest of the chart change. Play with the numbers from the Catholic system that have chosen PCVS' arts program in the past and the numbers change.
Why? My guess is they're trying to show a belief that closing PCVS and moving the arts programming to another school equals a loss of students to the KPRDSB.
Interestingly, though it takes these from the board-provided stats, the number that never changes is the projected student populations.
As wary as some might be to depend on projections, they're usually quite solid for high schools. The students who will attend high school in five years already exist-- they're in Grade 3 or 4 right now. Heck, the students in Grade 1 today will be in high school starting in 2019. With some variables (such as population shift/migration) to take into account, these numbers won't dramatically change. Boards also know the average number of credits taken by a high school student (since these schools are funded on figure based on the provincial average number of credits taken by a high school student). They also know, after more than five years, the average rate of Grade 12 students who return for a fifth year of high school. For most Ontario boards that I've heard of, that figure is around a 30% to 35% return rate.
Looking at the chart, 2009-10 enrolment at five schools is 4,099 FTE. In 2014-15, it's predicted to be 3,238. That's 800 fewer FTE, which in many boards across the province is larger than the average high school's population.
That's a number that shouldn't be forgotten and that won't be growing enough to change the rationale for why the review was started in the first place.
Don't trust the board numbers? OK. Let's look at the most recent census stats available from 2006 (to be updated in March 2012 from the 2011 census). You used to be able to embed the chart, but it's here.
Accounting for the five-year difference, for our purposes we take the 10-14 age cohort as the 15-19 cohort today. In 2006, there were 4,490. Going five years down the age range, it drops to 3,650. Hitting the age group that will be in high school towards the end of the date range from the board figures, the number in 2006 was 3,345. That's a difference of 1,145 to split between all the city's high schools.
My point here is you can chart and chart and chart, but nothing changes the reality that there will be far fewer high school students in five-to-10 years than there are today. In addition to other factors such as facility condition, etc., this is what drives the entire process.
With the board appearing to be committed to the survival of the arts programs at PCVS, it does seem, again, like we're talking about buildings instead of programs and people.

It never happened unless it happens to me

My heartstrings are being pulled by the rallying that is currently building and taking place in Peterborough. I've long held a soft spot for this city on the Otonabee, where I lived for just over eight months a decade ago.
The city, particularly those interested in its downtown Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School, is in the midst of a post-vote, pull-out-all-the-stops campaign to try and get an unpopular decision to close PCVS reversed.
There are petitions afoot, to be presented Dec. 5 when a group from the community travels to Queen's Park.
In the meantime, the Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB carries on implementing the decision of its trustees, with the scheduling of the program for future years underway. With the ever-annoying-to-me practice of calling a review an appeal... which it's not, since it cannot reverse the decision of trustees. Only trustees could choose to do that if they wished.
Together, they show the hopes being placed behind a process that won't likely result in any reversal of the decision by a power outside the board of trustees. They also show how life goes on for the programs involved in this review while those who fight to save a building carry on their track.
This weekend, I received an email from the local committee. It's not really meant for me since I'm not reporting in the KPR district, but it's a message the communications section of the local group is sending out to media throughout the district. It was shared with me by someone who tripped across this space and has started reading past posts on accommodation reviews. I've posted it to GoogleDocs (edited to remove personal email address and names) and it's embedded below.

I find this approach interesting. I did reply, indicating that despite how nice it is to be recognized for my expertise, the save-PCVSers may not end up finding me to be their best ally. Working in the biz, I also doubted they'd get any new attention with this appeal, given the realities of chain ownership and what local papers outside of Peterborough would be focusing on for their coverage.
Despite the "we're all in this together" and "you could learn from what we're going through" sentiment, practice has shown time and again that no, you're not in it together and unfortunately, you're not learning from others' prior experience until you find yourselves in the hotseat.
Regular readers here will know what other communities across this province have been through in their valiant efforts to reverse a school board's decision. None has, to date, been successful.
Of interest, I did a cursory search of the KPRDSB website for previous accommodation reviews-- 'cause hey, if we're all in this together we should have been together all along, right?
In a few minutes I was able to find documents relating to a prohibitive-to-repair closure review dating back to 2007 for Castleton and South Cramahe schools, the launch of a review for Newtonville PS and the re-activation of a review for Young's Point PS. It leaves me to wonder whether anyone in Peterborough was paying attention when those reviews happened and was as concerned about those school closures.
Likely not.
I do wish it was different. Particularly as a reporter who's covered several rounds of school-closure reviews within the same larger community. Watching (usually metaphorically hitting my head against the wall) as the next community repeated all the same steps as the one before it, because it hadn't paid any attention to the preceding reviews since they didn't come home to roost in one's own backyard.
With declining enrolment slowing or edging towards rebounding enrolment and the ever-aging condition of schools built for baby boomers, the prospect of a school-closure review is an ever-present reality for much of this province. Municipalities need to recognize this too-- think about the fate of your existing schools as you choose to build greenfield neighbourhoods instead of infilling and intensifying existing ones. Don't wait until your school is struck to learn the basics of how this process should work or what other communities have already tried.

Let's move from awareness to change

Welcome to the second day of bullying awareness week.
From statements from ministers to pledge drives, to twitter hastags we keep talking about bullying-- a term that is so overused it's lost some meaning as what it truly is: harassment.
With schools often leading the way, boy have we taken on bullying. Well, awareness of this form of harassment. I think every kid in any of our school systems has most certainly heard what this behaviour is, even if they weren't listening or understanding it.
But, as Moira MacDonald asked this past weekend, the evidence on the impact of these many awareness programs and activities is scant.
While revisions to the Education and Safe Schools acts now require board in Ontario to conduct periodic scans of their student body to look at where students feel safe and don't, I'm only aware of one board that took it to the extent the Thames Valley DSB did back in 2004-05, after the death of 14-year-old Strathroy student Joshua Melo.
That board surveyed every high school student in its (then) 30 high schools, some 17,000 or so kids, asking them where they feel safe, where they don't. It identified a definition and then asked several questions on how teens responded to this behaviour.
Overall (and going from memory) the responses could be troubling. In this first survey, the responses showed one in 10 students didn't feel safe at school. Social and peer acceptance along with a fear of recrimination were the leading answers for why students didn't report being bullied or witnessing it.
Remarkably, the board also surveyed every one of its Grade 4-8 students the following year. Then, it surveyed everyone in all age groups again-- spotting some slight improvements in the responses received. Some of the programs put into place were credited with helping, most notably the TRIBES program which is now widely used across Ontario.
Now some will continue to be critical of this board and others because students are still being harassed and the overall culture within some schools and communities hasn't moved. Rightly so in those cases where an appropriate, reasoned response isn't being put in place by the school and supported by the larger community around it.
As mentioned earlier in this space, changing this behaviour of harassment is going to require more than words and pledges, as well-intentioned as they may be. It means accepting that this behaviour is prevalent across our entire society. That it's woven into our fabric, particularly in sports, political and business worlds.
Is this the generation we're raising that will guide its children away from these attitudes and behaviours? It'll take 30 years to know.
So take your pledges (I did), learn your lingo, wear your ribbons (where available) and tsk tsk in shame every time you hear of bullying. Then ask yourself whether you're actually prepared to do more. Ask whether you'd be willing to accept a consequence
Look around you for this harassment in your circles-- I guarantee you'll find it. Would you do something to change it? Would you be accountable for your own actions and behaviours if you were the harasser?
Until more of our answers start changing on those questions, I fear all the awareness in the world won't effect the change we all say is needed.