Adam Prudhomme
Beaver Staff
Members of Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) Limestone District 27 marched in front of Hastings-Lennox Addington MPP Daryl Kramp’s Napanee office on Friday to express their displeasure with the Ontario PC’s proposed education plan.
All told about 80 people —teachers, students, parents and educational support staff — protested in front of Kramp’s office, brandishing signs and handing out literature to motorists who drove by the Dundas Street office.
“We’re trying to send a strong message to Daryl Kramp and (Ontario Premier) Doug Ford and (Ontario Minister of Education) Lisa Thompson and the entire Conservative government that we’re not happy with these cuts and these cuts aren’t going to happen,” said Andrea Loken, president of OSSTF Limestone District 27.
Chief among their concerns was the Progressive Conservatives’ proposed plan to increase class sizes from a ratio of 22 students to one teacher up to 28:1, make online courses mandatory for four credits and cut funding for support staff and school repairs.
“Going 28 to one means not only much larger class sizes, but disproportionately across different subject areas,” said Loken. “It also means programs that run with fewer students can’t run. It means there will be one in four teachers gone which means that extracurriculars will be affected. All the extra things that teachers do in the school, helping kids, they’ll be stretched that much thinner. It has a lot of implications beyond just class size.”
Loken says many class sizes are already beyond 22 students per teacher.
“Forcing students to take four credits in front of the computer instead of with the teacher in the school, those jobs, we don’t know where they would go,” Loken said of the proposed e-learning aspect of the plan. “They may be contracted out, they may be a form of privatization because they said it’s going to be a central consortium that delivers those credits. We don’t know what that looks like but it isn’t good for kids. Students have said in the past and continue to say we don’t want to learn in front of a computer. It’s an option for a few and it’s good as an option, but it really doesn’t work for most students.”
Loken hoped their demonstration would sway Kramp to push for his party to reconsider their proposed education plan.
“We want him to speak up for the constitutes and speak up for students and speak up for parents and public education and recognize these cuts are in the wrong direction,” Loken said of Kramp. “They will hurt kids. They’re not good for education and we’d like him to reverse the changes. They’re devastating. They’ll put us back decades.”
Ontario teachers currently aren’t in a legal strike position until their current contract expires in August.
“If the plan goes through, I don’t see how it is not a ripping up of collective agreements,” said Loken. “Our class size caps are actually negotiated in our collective agreements. With this kind of funding it’ll be very difficult for boards to honour those collective agreements which means there will be all kinds of disruptions. We’re not having our collective agreements ripped up. We do expect to negotiate and when we negotiate, understanding fiscal realities, we still want to make things better for kids. Our working conditions are their learning conditions.”
Makayla Roy, carrying a ‘What the Ford are you thinking?’ sign, was one of a handful of students who took part in the rally.
“I’m in Grade 11 and a lot of kids don’t think it’s an issue to deal with as seniors,” said Roy, who attends Napanee District Secondary School. “But it’s going to affect your grades. Especially if you want to get into teachers’ college, this is totally going to ruin a lot of people’s plans.”
She says class sizes are already an issue.
“In our school, it’s pretty big for our district but there’s no way we’re going to fit 40 kids (into one classroom), we can hardly fit the ones we have now into classrooms,” added Roy.
Kramp says he did speak with a representative from the protest in his office and upon going over their literature, it contained several factual errors.
“(The rep) mentioned their concerns and I suggested we’re obviously hopeful that we can deal with the issues in a manner that would be best for the tax payers but also the students,” said Kramp. “We agreed to disagree on a number of issues.”
“I just said a whole pile of this is totally inaccurate,” Kramp added, referring to the sheet of paper that protesters were handing out. “(The rep) said well no, but I said yes it’s totally and factually wrong in a number of areas. I just pointed out if you’re going to have a discussion, make sure your facts are correct.”
Kramp, who spoke to the Beaver on Tuesday between meetings in Toronto, said he’d be addressing the “factually wrong” information with the media in the near future when he had more time to review the information. At the time of the interview he didn’t have the sheet in front of him.
“This idea that we’re going to take class sizes to 40, the cutting of a billion dollars, compete hogwash,” said Kramp. “I have no idea where they’re coming up with this but it’s just dead wrong.”
The protest, which ran from 3 to 5 p.m. on Friday, reportedly caused a bit of a headache for businesses surrounding Kramp’s office. Greater Napanee BIA manager Tiffany Lloyd says owners of the neighbouring businesses reported protesters were “terribly rude and even threatening” to potential customers.
Kramp offered that his doors are always open and he welcomes people to exercise their democratic right to protest, but added that he wouldn’t like to see it interfere with the surrounding businesses.