Ford Conservative Government’s Rebrand Tries to Hide Its Education Cuts

“The Ford Conservative government has cut education funding every year since taking office in 2018. Its education funding announcement for the 2024-25 school year is nothing more than a thinly-veiled rebranding scheme, a blatant attempt to obscure their unbroken, six-year underfunding streak.

The government may have changed the name of the Grants for Student Needs, but the cuts are clear.
These grants form the core element of the education budget. They should have been an opportunity for this government to abandon its disastrous cuts and to make the investments in schools that students need and deserve. But instead, Premier Doug Ford and Minister of Education Stephen Lecce have once again failed students, teachers, and all Ontarians, with their inflationary cuts to schools.

This disastrous streak of education cuts is taking its toll.

Ontario faces a growing teacher recruitment and retention crisis, along with increased violence in schools, because of a severe underfunding of the critical resources and supports students need to succeed. But none of these issues are a priority for this government, as evidenced by their budget.

If this government truly cared about students, it would be making the real investments necessary to:

• address the growing teacher recruitment and retention crisis through meaningful collaboration with teachers – not just more government band-aids;
• stop the growing epidemic of violence in schools;
• lower class size averages, so students get more of the dedicated, one-on-one attention from their teachers that they need;
• significantly enhance mental health services in schools, and expand school-based resources, supports, and services; and
• implement the other critical measures called for by Catholic teachers in our education funding and pre-budget submissions.

Catholic teachers’ message to the Ford Conservative government is simple: cuts hurt students, families, teachers – everyone.

Stop the cuts, drop the purely performative measures, and give schools the resources they need. Let us do what we love, in the learning environment that students deserve, so we can best support their growth, well-being, and academic success, and build a better future for students, schools, and communities.”

- René Jansen in de Wal, President of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association