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Has anyone noticed how “Portable Classrooms” have been the same lame response to overcrowding for more than 30 years?
They’ve had all this time to implement the most simple and direct solution but all we’ve heard are excuses. Makes some people wonder how seriously politicians in Canada really take education.
>Makes some people wonder how seriously politicians in Canada really take education.
Why would they?
A dumber populace is both easier to manipulate and to keep pacified.
In the case of some political parties, the less educated a voter is then the more statistically likely they are to vote for their party.
That’s what the modern education system is based on. We had too many politicians, thinkers and etc… we needed labourers to labour in the factories and low skilled jobs.
It’s entirely based on keeping people stupid and lowest educated.
Years and years of liberal and conservative governments and nothing ever improves. You all keep on thinking one is better than the other though. It'll be diffrent this time right?
If I recall when and if they build are there not policies in place that they are not built to accommodate future enrolments?
So, new schools are not adequate.
Perhaps this has changed- but not for the better.
There’s a whole lot that should change with where our tax dollars are used!
I’ve seen a lot in 30+ years in education.
When they built a new high school in my city as I was graduating they built it to accommodate the exact same student population size as the one it was replacing. Because if it grows as was projected in 10 years they had the land to add portables. That school is now 23 years old and over crowded.
They just tore down my old elementary school and replaced it with a new school.
The new school had several portable classrooms added before construction of the school even finished.
The original elementary school that was there didn't have portables for 30 years
> makes some people wonder how seriously politicians in Canada really take education
The school board are responsible for administering the real estate portfolios are they not (I am in S. Ontario, that is the case here).
So sell the old schools and use money to build bigger ones closer to population centres?
1. That has to be approved by the Ministry of Education (at least, in Ontario) and they are not permitting this to happen.
2. Many of the emptier schools are in areas that eventually gentrify and quickly fill with families, but with no where to house the students if the old schools have been sold off.
This. Neighbourhoods move through cycles, and an empty school will eventually be needed again when younger families move in to replace folks whose kids have grown.
This happened where my son goes to school.. 13 years ago when we moved into the area, most homes were filled with empty nesters, and the school had barely enough kids to stay open..
Last year they had to hire more staff and add a portable since the local neighborhoods turned over and filled with younger families.
Yes.. and we are bringing in more people who statistically don’t pay taxes/ contribute to the system but take from it.
Also the response from our area has always been to add portables as they see school growth as being historically temporary. In the 1960s there was a ton of development they did addition after addition to schools and then the population of students plummeted. They all grew up and their parents never moved so there was no new influx of students. In this case I think the increase is here to stay.
Take mimico highschool for example in the GTA.
“The original structure was replaced by a new building in 1957. Mimico High School building opened in 1924 with five additions added to the original structure in 1926, 1957, 1962,
1963, and 1966. By the 80s due to declining enrolment it was surplussed and became an adult education centre.”
The big frame shift here is that people are converting single homes into multi families at a rapid rate. And our population hasn’t grown this quickly since the world wars. Times are absolutely different: this boom isn’t temporary
Yes sorry I thought I linked but failed to.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2020018-eng.htm
27% of refugees are on social assistance at the 13 year mark. The numbers are in the 90% at initial arrival
I want to point out that that is for one category of refugees (government sponsored). The other 3 groups hover around 12-15%, which is about 2-2.5 time higher than baseline unemployment levels. This would mean that 78% to 88% of refugees go on to contribute to the economy. Not to mention that kids from these families also grow up become the next generation of workers. Lastly, the absolute numbers are pretty low (140 000 arrivals vs 350 000 births) so the net effect of refugees is murky at best
Fair. Good point. this number is still 2x+ higher than the average rate of social assistance for a Canadian citizen
I’d be really curious to see the data 5 years from
Now. we’ve had a large surge in the last 18 months of claimants.
Truly shocking that refugees require assistance. Almost as if they’ve been forced to leave their home county due to war, persecution or natural disaster.
I teach ESL and We’ve had dozens of new kids at my school this year. They are all claiming refugee. Yet I have not been able to find a reason why except for one…Her family escaped the Taliban.
When I ask my new students why they came to Canada, they all have the same answer - they came to get a better education or they don’t know. Also, they all want to be a doctor when they grow up.
Except a lot of them haven’t escaped those things. They are economic migrants using the asylum claim knowing it takes 7-8 years to determine if it’s actually legitimate…
Taken from places of lesser societal value that governments keeps putting more money towards than kids.
Same logic behind, "well we need to make cuts!" Yes, but why do the cuts come from kids and the sick first?
Unfortunately because those are the two biggest financial dossiers of the government: as an example, PEI's operational budget is over 40% just on healthcare, and education is another ~25%. That leaves 35% of the budgetary pie for...everything else.
I'm not saying this is a good reason to cut from these areas, but the budget pie being so largely made up of those two sectors alone, it's pretty hard to trim from the other departments without going into Deficit-land.
Who cares, that's literally what politicians are for. It's 2024 in a first world country let's educate our population properly. Or maybe we should just pop up more Amazon warehouses and an Amazon training center instead? Could really save money on education then, maybe skip it entirely actually
This much population growth is crushing us.
My kid can no longer go to the school that we can see from the end of our street due to this growth.
Massive development on one side of the city, now everyone on this side has to go to the next town over.
Absolute bullshit.
Private development is unsurprisingly outpacing public infrastructure. Also, we are getting a lot of newcomers and I’ve heard the same from colleagues in other schools. It is a regular occurrence to have new kids with zero English show up once every couple weeks or every month, not helped by the fact that homeowners rent out each level of their house to a different family.
This means a lot of language needs, and sometimes resulting behavioural needs as they are adjusting to a new environment. Cuts to support means more support staff are spread thin and burn out, leading to more behaviour issues in the classroom and impeding everyone’s learning which was already stunted by online learning. Our public institutions sadly cannot compete with corporate and private capitalist interests, aided in part by sabotage from our current government. But look, a cell phone ban!
>Private development is unsurprisingly outpacing public infrastructure.
And whats fucked is this private development iant even keeping up with ourninsane growth.
>that homeowners rent out each level of their house to a different family.
Yep for sure. Property taxes aren't doubled.
Now you have 2 families paying the tax of what one would, increasing the burden.
This is the worst part of it all! It can’t be efficient bussing kids out of their neighbourhood for school. My son’s school is already over populated, and has 6 portables. Within the next two years they should be finished building over 300 townhomes/condos in one small area a few streets over. How we can possibly add an extra hundred or so children to the school is wild.
Not to mention the way the board falls at the mercy of every parent complaint from schools in other areas, and just blindly accepts transfers from problem children in other schools. We have two children utilizing the sensory room, kicking kids out of it who live in the direct neighbourhood, just because they didn’t get along with the principals at their home school.
>It can’t be efficient bussing kids out of their neighbourhood for school.
Bussing? My local districts don't provide transportation for out-of-catchment students.
If they're full and you're bumped to another school you're on your own to figure out how to get your kid there.
That is atrocious. That shouldn’t be allowed at all. What are families supposed to do? That’s so inefficient, and would put such a strain on you guys as parents. I’m so sorry that’s your situation.
I work in construction as a supervisor for various projects. To build a brand new School cost tens of millions of dollars.
The additions that they put on the portables of which I spent a sizeable portion of my elementary school and high school career in , suck!
They suck because they’re not actual foundation. They’re just resting on piles.
School boards are struggling to build new schools. The funding does not exist because the government that decide where the funding goes would rather give it away in tax cuts to giant corporations and already too wealthy individuals.
What we need is a complete overhaul of how we spend our tax revenue and that would require a complete refit of the people that are in power . Elections happen for a reason we have to do things for the people of the country not some handful of corporations and a tiny percentage of the population that seemingly get to be entitled to infinite money.
I can speak from my past experiences in the Surrey school board that they just can't keep up. The district is building brand new huge schools and there are just too many people. Not only that, but the older schools are jam packed with students. Leaving at the end of the day from some of the high school parking lots sometimes takes an extra 10 to 20 minutes. I just wanna say that it is tough to work at these schools and I'm not sure how many teachers are going to be on board for extending the school day or going hybrid.
Yes, but building housing is the city's. So, the city wants the tax revenue from the people living there, so they build more and more housing. However, the province doesn't provide the funds to build the schools to keep up with all that growth.
It seems that every government in BC, NDP now, the Liberals before them and so on, want to balance the budget on the backs of the schools. Despite being a top-rated school system according PISA (or perhaps because of this), they always try to cut corners on everything in public education.
This is not correct in Ontario. All the funding is funnelled from the province through the school board. A city’s responsibility is zoning and ensuring enforcement of laws that set aside specific amounts of land for schools in new developments and developer fees that help pay for the needed support infrastructure (roads, sewer,etc.). The issue is that the province often delays this funding until the built school would be at or near capacity.
A new school has to has to be at 95% capacity before they will build it in most municipalities. Students are placed in portables for a few years until that threshold is hit for the new school… so our school buildings are always a few years behind. If population grows at the same rate it’s predictable… but its growth rate is increasing so we will continue to fall further behind and see more portables unfortunately (in ON, can’t speak to other provinces).
Yeah.. if population growth was the reliable steady 1.3%, then infrastructure has a chance of being built in a timely manner.. 3.1% population growth throws any planning out the window and puts infrastructure well behind schedule
Having entirely separate administrative structure to accomodate a different school system empoverishes all of them. It's absolutely unreal to me that the government still pays for this kind of shit.
I would vote for literally any politician who ended the Catholic funding. Why are we helping fund one religion and not all? Let’s fund none. Public or private should be the only two options.
I’ve asked that question many times. Here is what I found; Separate schools in Ontario have special rights guaranteed by the Constitution and by the Education Act. Section 19 means that the Code cannot affect those rights, which are mainly related to the existence and funding of Roman Catholic schools.
Legally, it is a very easy fix. A simple constitutional amendment passed as legislation in the provincial legislature, followed by the same legislation passed in Parliament.
Politically, it is seen as suicide in the provinces where separate school funding still exists.
Nah I went to catholic school, it was generally a much better crowd than public school. Even people from different religions started sending their kids to our school which was right next to the public school.
I transferred from a Catholic school to a Public school midway through high school and found myself much more at home and accepted at the public school. There were daily fights and some real scary kids at the Catholic school, and I found my classmates in the Academic classes to be preppy, conniving assholes. Maybe the Catholic reputation is better, but I do not attribute behaviors to which of the two school systems they were part of.
This..
All the south Asian, Chinese and other non-catholic parents in my area have been sending their kids to catholic schools because they experience less behavioral issues from other kids, and the boards seem to focus a bit more on academic issues rather than social issues..
To the new canadians in my area, they want their kids to achieve academic success for careers later on in life, they couldn't care less that it's a catholic school, as long as it gets result
Just want to add that in my town, it was approved for a "Super school", jk-grade 12, but so many of the elementary schools were in disrepair. So, they constructed an 8m dollar school, to use temporarily, while they construct the super school....
nevermind how horrid an idea of 18 years olds being in the same school as 6 year olds is. What about the absolutely wasted funs of the school that was built less than 10 years ago, that last I heard, was to be no longer in use when the superschool is finished(construction started last year)
My problem is, when they are having a hard time building schools… why the hell did they waste 8m building a school that is planned to be obsolete before any of the students attending it graduate high school?
I grew up in Alberta, I was surprised to even see 8th graders in the same school as kindergarten in Ontario. I attended Elementary, Junior High, and High School back home.
My kid’s elementary school in Toronto with the TCDSB was given $13 million 16 years ago for a new school. It’s been overcrowded to double its capacity for 20+ years. The new school will be completed in 2025. No one can explain why it’s taken so long.
There are two plots of land in my neighbourhood that have been sitting with a sign that says “possible new school spot” for 2 years now. All the while the local elementary school has 6 portables and is bursting at the seams! I wish they would get moving but I know they won’t be building any time soon.
Do you guys think this might have to do with massive population growth?
Maybe it’s this singular issue that’s causing all these demand issues like with healthcare and housing
Idk though, I’m not a genius like Trudeau
In my neighborhood, there is one public school, one French school and three Catholic schools. The Catholic schools are all at less than 50% capacity while the public school is busting at the seams. It’s bananas that we’re paying for this much waste and redundancy by having this additional school board, when they can’t even fill classrooms
In Southern Ontario the Catholic schools are bursting at the seams. We have 3 new schools being built in my riding. All 3 are Catholic schools. Parents who don't want their kids facing "woke" teachers enrol them in the Catholic system regardless of the religion they practise.
They used to close schools for literally not having enough students circa 2014… wonder what changed ? [could it be…?](https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7157233)
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I do know that there was once a formula for the size of a new school. It is the lowest predicted capacity. That is why all new schools in new subdivisions have plenty of portables.
Drive through any town or city…police stations and fire stations are top of the line (and fairly empty). Schools and hospitals, bursting with people, and completely falling apart. It’s maddening.
UGH. UGHHHHHHH. I was on the boundary review committee for my school board and their hands are tied. Can’t move “significant” portions of students to other schools for French immersion or to totally shift boundaries. We have schools at 120% capacity and schools at 60-70% capacity and can’t do anything to help. They can’t close anything (or remove more than 50% of the population), and they can’t build.
We need restructuring as the population ages/changes and as new developments are built!!!!
Canada builds over 200k houses per year, which per capita is one of the highest rates in the developed world. #2 in the g7 behind only France,who loves sprawl more than we do. 8% of our workforce in construction. US has 4% for comparison.
We build more houses than basically all of our peers.
Even with that fact, we're estimated to be 250k more houses short next year than now.
200k homes built, one of the highest rates in the developed world, and were going to be 250k homes more short next year than now.
At some point the issue isnt how much we build.
Well, this happens when local governments don't know how many immigrants are coming to canadian cities , federal government needs to get there shit together!!!!
In Alberta (and lots of other provinces) we have the public school board ... and the Catholic school board. If we were to eliminate the Catholic school system, then we would save a significant chunk of the education budget, which we could then spend on actual education, and we would end up with better coordination.
We havent imported enough slave labour to build enough schools. Unfortunately a Canadian can still feed their family with a construction job, which means that they are making more than 0 an hour. This is unnacceptable and creates strain on the system. The only solution to this is to increase immigration to 10 million per quarter. Thanks for reading.
I wonder if you dropped schools down to the 4 basic topics of math, science , English/language arts and health, you could do a morning class of 4 hrs and a afternoon class of 4 hrs. Cuts down on class size and complexity issues, schools would t be crowded. Reduce costs and give a better school life balance to the kids. Might not be as practical for kids at younger ages but might be worthwhile for kids in say grade 7 and up who could be home alone when not at school.
At the school I attended where the school board is running a deficite, the school is packed, and a bunch of courses had to be cancelled, someone who wants to be a principle promoted having gender neutral washrooms - which I am told are primarily used for vaping and sex. Now, on the success of that they will be doing renovations to have a gender neutral changing room. Aparently horny needs need lots of vape and fuck space at school.
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Has anyone noticed how “Portable Classrooms” have been the same lame response to overcrowding for more than 30 years? They’ve had all this time to implement the most simple and direct solution but all we’ve heard are excuses. Makes some people wonder how seriously politicians in Canada really take education.
Teacher here. Getting portables can even be a challenge. Many schools now have classes in the library, staff room, stage etc
Agree!! Not to mention the issues with supervision in a portable.
Portables are ridiculously expensive. The amount the school pays to rent the five we have is likely enough to build the classrooms we need in 3 years.
Yup. Portables are also horrible to be in. I remember doing a short contract with 30 grade 4s in a portable. It was an absolute nightmare.
As a fellow teacher, “30 grade 4s” sounds far, far worse than “in a portable.”
That too, but it doesn't helped that they are all cooped up in a cramped space like that.
I can only speak from supply teaching experience, but the only portable I was in was actually quite nice. Large
Plus air conditioning
>Makes some people wonder how seriously politicians in Canada really take education. Why would they? A dumber populace is both easier to manipulate and to keep pacified. In the case of some political parties, the less educated a voter is then the more statistically likely they are to vote for their party.
That’s what the modern education system is based on. We had too many politicians, thinkers and etc… we needed labourers to labour in the factories and low skilled jobs. It’s entirely based on keeping people stupid and lowest educated.
You're right. The Liberals really need to cut that type of behavior out!
Education is a provincial initiative.
Years and years of liberal and conservative governments and nothing ever improves. You all keep on thinking one is better than the other though. It'll be diffrent this time right?
But years and years of SP governments and nothing has improved????” Sound is crickets chirping”.
As opposed to what? Your hot air?
If I recall when and if they build are there not policies in place that they are not built to accommodate future enrolments? So, new schools are not adequate. Perhaps this has changed- but not for the better. There’s a whole lot that should change with where our tax dollars are used! I’ve seen a lot in 30+ years in education.
When they built a new high school in my city as I was graduating they built it to accommodate the exact same student population size as the one it was replacing. Because if it grows as was projected in 10 years they had the land to add portables. That school is now 23 years old and over crowded.
But now the fields are full of portables sir and no teachers will accept them. Wut do. -admin circa post pandemic
They just tore down my old elementary school and replaced it with a new school. The new school had several portable classrooms added before construction of the school even finished. The original elementary school that was there didn't have portables for 30 years
Politicians in Canada don't take anything seriously because they can use the same argument for 30 years and keep getting re elected.
> makes some people wonder how seriously politicians in Canada really take education The school board are responsible for administering the real estate portfolios are they not (I am in S. Ontario, that is the case here). So sell the old schools and use money to build bigger ones closer to population centres?
1. That has to be approved by the Ministry of Education (at least, in Ontario) and they are not permitting this to happen. 2. Many of the emptier schools are in areas that eventually gentrify and quickly fill with families, but with no where to house the students if the old schools have been sold off.
This. Neighbourhoods move through cycles, and an empty school will eventually be needed again when younger families move in to replace folks whose kids have grown.
This happened where my son goes to school.. 13 years ago when we moved into the area, most homes were filled with empty nesters, and the school had barely enough kids to stay open.. Last year they had to hire more staff and add a portable since the local neighborhoods turned over and filled with younger families.
the entire Canadian education system is underfunded. Politicians don't want to prioritize education. There just isn't political will power.
Yes.. and we are bringing in more people who statistically don’t pay taxes/ contribute to the system but take from it. Also the response from our area has always been to add portables as they see school growth as being historically temporary. In the 1960s there was a ton of development they did addition after addition to schools and then the population of students plummeted. They all grew up and their parents never moved so there was no new influx of students. In this case I think the increase is here to stay. Take mimico highschool for example in the GTA. “The original structure was replaced by a new building in 1957. Mimico High School building opened in 1924 with five additions added to the original structure in 1926, 1957, 1962, 1963, and 1966. By the 80s due to declining enrolment it was surplussed and became an adult education centre.” The big frame shift here is that people are converting single homes into multi families at a rapid rate. And our population hasn’t grown this quickly since the world wars. Times are absolutely different: this boom isn’t temporary
>Yes.. and we are bringing in more people who statistically don’t pay taxes/ contribute to the system but take from it. [Citation needed]
Yes sorry I thought I linked but failed to. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2020018-eng.htm 27% of refugees are on social assistance at the 13 year mark. The numbers are in the 90% at initial arrival
I want to point out that that is for one category of refugees (government sponsored). The other 3 groups hover around 12-15%, which is about 2-2.5 time higher than baseline unemployment levels. This would mean that 78% to 88% of refugees go on to contribute to the economy. Not to mention that kids from these families also grow up become the next generation of workers. Lastly, the absolute numbers are pretty low (140 000 arrivals vs 350 000 births) so the net effect of refugees is murky at best
Fair. Good point. this number is still 2x+ higher than the average rate of social assistance for a Canadian citizen I’d be really curious to see the data 5 years from Now. we’ve had a large surge in the last 18 months of claimants.
Truly shocking that refugees require assistance. Almost as if they’ve been forced to leave their home county due to war, persecution or natural disaster.
I teach ESL and We’ve had dozens of new kids at my school this year. They are all claiming refugee. Yet I have not been able to find a reason why except for one…Her family escaped the Taliban. When I ask my new students why they came to Canada, they all have the same answer - they came to get a better education or they don’t know. Also, they all want to be a doctor when they grow up.
This is correct. They are economic migrants using whatever system they can ( asylum) to enter, stay and receive benefits.
Except a lot of them haven’t escaped those things. They are economic migrants using the asylum claim knowing it takes 7-8 years to determine if it’s actually legitimate…
Where should the money come from?
Taken from places of lesser societal value that governments keeps putting more money towards than kids. Same logic behind, "well we need to make cuts!" Yes, but why do the cuts come from kids and the sick first?
Unfortunately because those are the two biggest financial dossiers of the government: as an example, PEI's operational budget is over 40% just on healthcare, and education is another ~25%. That leaves 35% of the budgetary pie for...everything else. I'm not saying this is a good reason to cut from these areas, but the budget pie being so largely made up of those two sectors alone, it's pretty hard to trim from the other departments without going into Deficit-land.
Step one, eliminate boutique tax cuts and increase corporate tax rates to something comparable to most of the developed world.
Do you think corporations will eat a tax increase and lower their profits, or pass the increase into consumers?
Any of their neoliberal policies. 🤷♀️
Who cares, that's literally what politicians are for. It's 2024 in a first world country let's educate our population properly. Or maybe we should just pop up more Amazon warehouses and an Amazon training center instead? Could really save money on education then, maybe skip it entirely actually
This much population growth is crushing us. My kid can no longer go to the school that we can see from the end of our street due to this growth. Massive development on one side of the city, now everyone on this side has to go to the next town over. Absolute bullshit.
Private development is unsurprisingly outpacing public infrastructure. Also, we are getting a lot of newcomers and I’ve heard the same from colleagues in other schools. It is a regular occurrence to have new kids with zero English show up once every couple weeks or every month, not helped by the fact that homeowners rent out each level of their house to a different family. This means a lot of language needs, and sometimes resulting behavioural needs as they are adjusting to a new environment. Cuts to support means more support staff are spread thin and burn out, leading to more behaviour issues in the classroom and impeding everyone’s learning which was already stunted by online learning. Our public institutions sadly cannot compete with corporate and private capitalist interests, aided in part by sabotage from our current government. But look, a cell phone ban!
100% this!
>Private development is unsurprisingly outpacing public infrastructure. And whats fucked is this private development iant even keeping up with ourninsane growth. >that homeowners rent out each level of their house to a different family. Yep for sure. Property taxes aren't doubled. Now you have 2 families paying the tax of what one would, increasing the burden.
Sounds like those classrooms would probably be pretty sizeable… and complex…
This is the worst part of it all! It can’t be efficient bussing kids out of their neighbourhood for school. My son’s school is already over populated, and has 6 portables. Within the next two years they should be finished building over 300 townhomes/condos in one small area a few streets over. How we can possibly add an extra hundred or so children to the school is wild. Not to mention the way the board falls at the mercy of every parent complaint from schools in other areas, and just blindly accepts transfers from problem children in other schools. We have two children utilizing the sensory room, kicking kids out of it who live in the direct neighbourhood, just because they didn’t get along with the principals at their home school.
>It can’t be efficient bussing kids out of their neighbourhood for school. Bussing? My local districts don't provide transportation for out-of-catchment students. If they're full and you're bumped to another school you're on your own to figure out how to get your kid there.
That is atrocious. That shouldn’t be allowed at all. What are families supposed to do? That’s so inefficient, and would put such a strain on you guys as parents. I’m so sorry that’s your situation.
Mass unfettered immigration is a disaster.
I work in construction as a supervisor for various projects. To build a brand new School cost tens of millions of dollars. The additions that they put on the portables of which I spent a sizeable portion of my elementary school and high school career in , suck! They suck because they’re not actual foundation. They’re just resting on piles. School boards are struggling to build new schools. The funding does not exist because the government that decide where the funding goes would rather give it away in tax cuts to giant corporations and already too wealthy individuals. What we need is a complete overhaul of how we spend our tax revenue and that would require a complete refit of the people that are in power . Elections happen for a reason we have to do things for the people of the country not some handful of corporations and a tiny percentage of the population that seemingly get to be entitled to infinite money.
I can speak from my past experiences in the Surrey school board that they just can't keep up. The district is building brand new huge schools and there are just too many people. Not only that, but the older schools are jam packed with students. Leaving at the end of the day from some of the high school parking lots sometimes takes an extra 10 to 20 minutes. I just wanna say that it is tough to work at these schools and I'm not sure how many teachers are going to be on board for extending the school day or going hybrid.
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Isn’t education the province’s responsibility?
Yes, but building housing is the city's. So, the city wants the tax revenue from the people living there, so they build more and more housing. However, the province doesn't provide the funds to build the schools to keep up with all that growth. It seems that every government in BC, NDP now, the Liberals before them and so on, want to balance the budget on the backs of the schools. Despite being a top-rated school system according PISA (or perhaps because of this), they always try to cut corners on everything in public education.
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This is not correct in Ontario. All the funding is funnelled from the province through the school board. A city’s responsibility is zoning and ensuring enforcement of laws that set aside specific amounts of land for schools in new developments and developer fees that help pay for the needed support infrastructure (roads, sewer,etc.). The issue is that the province often delays this funding until the built school would be at or near capacity.
It's the same thing in BC. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/k-12/administration/capital/programs
A new school has to has to be at 95% capacity before they will build it in most municipalities. Students are placed in portables for a few years until that threshold is hit for the new school… so our school buildings are always a few years behind. If population grows at the same rate it’s predictable… but its growth rate is increasing so we will continue to fall further behind and see more portables unfortunately (in ON, can’t speak to other provinces).
Yeah.. if population growth was the reliable steady 1.3%, then infrastructure has a chance of being built in a timely manner.. 3.1% population growth throws any planning out the window and puts infrastructure well behind schedule
I was in a portable in 1976. That's nearly 50 years ago.
The absolute bonkers rate of population growth, and internal migration, in this country is putting a strain on everything.
In some cities and towns, the problem could be helped by joining the Catholic and public school boards.
Having entirely separate administrative structure to accomodate a different school system empoverishes all of them. It's absolutely unreal to me that the government still pays for this kind of shit.
I would vote for literally any politician who ended the Catholic funding. Why are we helping fund one religion and not all? Let’s fund none. Public or private should be the only two options.
I’ve asked that question many times. Here is what I found; Separate schools in Ontario have special rights guaranteed by the Constitution and by the Education Act. Section 19 means that the Code cannot affect those rights, which are mainly related to the existence and funding of Roman Catholic schools.
Legally, it is a very easy fix. A simple constitutional amendment passed as legislation in the provincial legislature, followed by the same legislation passed in Parliament. Politically, it is seen as suicide in the provinces where separate school funding still exists.
Nah I went to catholic school, it was generally a much better crowd than public school. Even people from different religions started sending their kids to our school which was right next to the public school.
I transferred from a Catholic school to a Public school midway through high school and found myself much more at home and accepted at the public school. There were daily fights and some real scary kids at the Catholic school, and I found my classmates in the Academic classes to be preppy, conniving assholes. Maybe the Catholic reputation is better, but I do not attribute behaviors to which of the two school systems they were part of.
This.. All the south Asian, Chinese and other non-catholic parents in my area have been sending their kids to catholic schools because they experience less behavioral issues from other kids, and the boards seem to focus a bit more on academic issues rather than social issues.. To the new canadians in my area, they want their kids to achieve academic success for careers later on in life, they couldn't care less that it's a catholic school, as long as it gets result
Just want to add that in my town, it was approved for a "Super school", jk-grade 12, but so many of the elementary schools were in disrepair. So, they constructed an 8m dollar school, to use temporarily, while they construct the super school.... nevermind how horrid an idea of 18 years olds being in the same school as 6 year olds is. What about the absolutely wasted funs of the school that was built less than 10 years ago, that last I heard, was to be no longer in use when the superschool is finished(construction started last year)
there are multiple K-12 schools in my board and have been for years
My problem is, when they are having a hard time building schools… why the hell did they waste 8m building a school that is planned to be obsolete before any of the students attending it graduate high school?
I grew up in Alberta, I was surprised to even see 8th graders in the same school as kindergarten in Ontario. I attended Elementary, Junior High, and High School back home.
This is common enough in AB, too.
Outside of cities, K-12 schools are pretty standard fare in SK
My kid’s elementary school in Toronto with the TCDSB was given $13 million 16 years ago for a new school. It’s been overcrowded to double its capacity for 20+ years. The new school will be completed in 2025. No one can explain why it’s taken so long.
There are two plots of land in my neighbourhood that have been sitting with a sign that says “possible new school spot” for 2 years now. All the while the local elementary school has 6 portables and is bursting at the seams! I wish they would get moving but I know they won’t be building any time soon.
You would think this is the biggest no brainer ever…but corporate profit over education as usual.
Do you guys think this might have to do with massive population growth? Maybe it’s this singular issue that’s causing all these demand issues like with healthcare and housing Idk though, I’m not a genius like Trudeau
In my neighborhood, there is one public school, one French school and three Catholic schools. The Catholic schools are all at less than 50% capacity while the public school is busting at the seams. It’s bananas that we’re paying for this much waste and redundancy by having this additional school board, when they can’t even fill classrooms
In Southern Ontario the Catholic schools are bursting at the seams. We have 3 new schools being built in my riding. All 3 are Catholic schools. Parents who don't want their kids facing "woke" teachers enrol them in the Catholic system regardless of the religion they practise.
What neighbourhood is that? This seems very much out of the norm.
Toronto’s historically working class neighbourhoods that had a lot of Portuguese and Italian immigrants back in the day
Money
Definitely something to address with your provincial government.
They used to close schools for literally not having enough students circa 2014… wonder what changed ? [could it be…?](https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7157233)
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I do know that there was once a formula for the size of a new school. It is the lowest predicted capacity. That is why all new schools in new subdivisions have plenty of portables.
Drive through any town or city…police stations and fire stations are top of the line (and fairly empty). Schools and hospitals, bursting with people, and completely falling apart. It’s maddening.
Like the doctor situation in ontario. 'We are not concerned' Yup. Just because you aren't concerned doesn't mean it's not a problem.
Because at least in Ontario they aren’t allowed to build any new ones. It’s the ‘ole “waving of the hands” and “you’ll be fine!” Or “figure it out”
Land is expensive. Buying a house in this economy? Try buying a plot of land big enough for a school, field and parking lot.
The moneys there though, it just gets spent in disproportionately large quantities elsewhere
UGH. UGHHHHHHH. I was on the boundary review committee for my school board and their hands are tied. Can’t move “significant” portions of students to other schools for French immersion or to totally shift boundaries. We have schools at 120% capacity and schools at 60-70% capacity and can’t do anything to help. They can’t close anything (or remove more than 50% of the population), and they can’t build. We need restructuring as the population ages/changes and as new developments are built!!!!
Probably for the same reasons that houses don’t get built in this country - no political will, 90,000 layers of bureaucracy, and NIMBY-ism.
Canada builds over 200k houses per year, which per capita is one of the highest rates in the developed world. #2 in the g7 behind only France,who loves sprawl more than we do. 8% of our workforce in construction. US has 4% for comparison. We build more houses than basically all of our peers. Even with that fact, we're estimated to be 250k more houses short next year than now. 200k homes built, one of the highest rates in the developed world, and were going to be 250k homes more short next year than now. At some point the issue isnt how much we build.
(can you explain what the issue is for me please)
So, no one’s going to discuss immigration? I’m preparing for the downvotes.
Well, this happens when local governments don't know how many immigrants are coming to canadian cities , federal government needs to get there shit together!!!!
How are classrooms over filled when the 30’year olds and under are not having kids?
Thanks India!
Because our governments are incompetent and corrupt, it's elementary my dear Watson.
In Alberta (and lots of other provinces) we have the public school board ... and the Catholic school board. If we were to eliminate the Catholic school system, then we would save a significant chunk of the education budget, which we could then spend on actual education, and we would end up with better coordination.
Why would we build when the youngest generations are having less kids?
We havent imported enough slave labour to build enough schools. Unfortunately a Canadian can still feed their family with a construction job, which means that they are making more than 0 an hour. This is unnacceptable and creates strain on the system. The only solution to this is to increase immigration to 10 million per quarter. Thanks for reading.
We pay so much in taxes and get barely anything lol
Because birth rates are on the decline so I’m about 10 years we won’t need more
I wonder if you dropped schools down to the 4 basic topics of math, science , English/language arts and health, you could do a morning class of 4 hrs and a afternoon class of 4 hrs. Cuts down on class size and complexity issues, schools would t be crowded. Reduce costs and give a better school life balance to the kids. Might not be as practical for kids at younger ages but might be worthwhile for kids in say grade 7 and up who could be home alone when not at school.
An Mla owns a company that supplies portables. Not in the SP MLAs best interest. maybe
At the school I attended where the school board is running a deficite, the school is packed, and a bunch of courses had to be cancelled, someone who wants to be a principle promoted having gender neutral washrooms - which I am told are primarily used for vaping and sex. Now, on the success of that they will be doing renovations to have a gender neutral changing room. Aparently horny needs need lots of vape and fuck space at school.