Promises Made Must Be Promises Kept (From the President)
As we go to press the provincial election has just concluded. The outcome is good news for public education. With ETFO’s encouragement, the people of Ontario voted for an education-friendly Liberal party to govern for a second four-year term. The re-election of Education Minister Kathleen Wynne gives us added hope that we will continue to see improvements in our elementary schools.
If you are one of our newer members – that is, if you have been teaching for less than four or five years – you may not fully appreciate how far we have come since 2003. During the two terms of its mandate, the Conservative government led by Premier Mike Harris attacked teachers and their federations and undermined public education, reducing school board budgets by some $2 billion over eight years.
ETFO and its locals worked hard to defeat that government, and when the Liberals came to power in 2003 we saw an immediate change in both attitude and actions. We have witnessed significant improvements in education in Ontario in the last four years and an infusion of more than $2.5 billion into the system.
Equally important is the sea change in our relationship with the government. Beginning with Gerard Kennedy and continuing today with Kathleen Wynne, Liberal education ministers have demonstrated their respect for public education, and for teachers and their federations.
While there has been much progress, more needs to be done to ensure that Ontario’s elementary students receive the education they deserve. In particular we look forward to continued efforts to close the gap in funding between elementary and secondary students. The continuation of a $711 difference in funding is not acceptable.
The second phase of our Close the Gap campaign indisputably convinced the governing Liberals that the issues of public elementary teachers could not be ignored, and in their election platform they pledged $150 million “to close the gap.”
We will hold the government to account for the commitments promised during the campaign. But we should be under no illusion that helping to re-elect this government guarantees success when we bargain new collec- tive agreements.
During the coming months ETFO will commit all of its resources to ensuring that when collective agreements expire next August they are replaced by agreements that provide you with working conditions at least equal to those of your secondary colleagues and to ensuring that our students have the best possible learning conditions.
Equalizing our working conditions and our students’ learning conditions will require elementary teachers to overcome more than a century of discrimination. But this historic discrimination can be ended. Elementary teachers proved for over a hundred years that it was easy to settle for less. Those days are gone forever.
We have helped re-elect the self-styled “education premier” It is our job to make certain that promises made are promises kept. We will work to ensure that this newly elected government and Ontario’s public school boards recognize they have no choice but to close the gap.
