Transcription du comité 1997-févr-25 | Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

Consideration of Bill 104, An Act to improve the accountability, effectiveness and quality of Ontario's school system by permitting a reduction in the number of school boards, establishing an Education Improvement Commission to oversee the transition to the new system, providing for certain matters related to elections in 1997 and making other improvements to the Education Act and the Municipal Elections Act, 1996 / Projet de loi 104, Loi visant à accroître l'obligation de rendre compte, l'efficacité et la qualité du système scolaire ontarien en permettant la réduction du nombre des conseils scolaires, en créant la Commission d'amélioration de l'éducation, chargée d'encadrer la transition vers le nouveau système, en prévoyant certaines questions liées aux élections de 1997 et en apportant d'autres améliorations à la Loi sur l'éducation et à la Loi de 1996 sur les élections municipales.

HELENA WEHRSTEIN

The Chair (Ms Annamarie Castrilli): Welcome to our hearings this afternoon. Could I ask Helena Wehrstein to come forward. Thank you very much for being here this afternoon. I welcome you to the committee. We have 10 minutes per individual. You can use that time in any way that you wish, and if there is any time left over, the committee will ask you some questions.

Ms Helena Wehrstein: Thank you for the opportunity to address your committee. I am a parent of a five-year-old who attends senior kindergarten at Ossington-Old Orchard Public School in the Toronto Board of Education. I am also a teacher at Rosedale Public School in Toronto, which gives me a vested interest in this matter. However, it is having a child who has just entered the school system and has many years ahead of her that really drives me to oppose this bill. Being a teacher makes me more aware of what could be in store for my daughter's future.

Despite my dislike of public speaking, and the fact that I have never done anything like this before, I decided I had to ask to speak to these hearings. I am hoping not everyone on the government side of the House and in this committee has finalized their decision to support Bill 104. The best arguments you are hearing from the bill's many critics ought to be given careful consideration and not simply dismissed as the voices of special interests. I make no apologies for taking a special interest in my child's education and in the future of her entire generation of Ontario youth.

My first concern with Bill 104 is the process. The legislation has not yet been passed, but the structures for implementing it are already being put in place and school trustees will soon lose the legal powers they were elected by the people to exercise. Their authority is overridden by the Education Improvement Commission, an unelected body appointed by the government, whose rulings are not subject to court challenge.

Reflecting the government's unseemly haste, very few hours are allotted to these hearings. In Toronto, for example, you will hear from only about 10% of those who have applied to speak unless you choose to extend the process. No firm dollar figures have been attached to the provincial grant that is supposed to make up for the removal of education funding from property taxes, so we are left in the dark as to what the funding formula will be. But if the bill's critics proceed, on the basis of the minister's pronouncements, to estimate per student funding in future years, we are accused of fearmongering.

The real costs of board amalgamations have not been soberly assessed. There has been no feasibility or impact study done. The Ministry of Education shuns public exposure. The Parent-Teacher Association of Rosedale Public School invited the minister to send a representative to a meeting concerning Bill 104; no one showed up. This process is not well designed to inform the public and help us to participate meaningfully in a debate over the future of the school system in Ontario.

As for the bill itself, it removes the power of municipalities to raise any taxes for education. This has been done in the name of equality. Supposedly children outside Metro are being shortchanged because citizens and businesses in the Metro area have chosen, through our elected representatives, to fund our schools at a higher per student level. There may indeed by a case for replacing the contribution from local business and industry taxes with a province-wide per student grant, but to remove at the same time the power to supplement this grant with funds from residential taxes is really to cut local boards and their trustees out of a meaningful role in educational decision-making.

Elected school boards provide a special form of politics dedicated to informed public discussion and choice about the nature of the education we provide for our children. Local citizens are able to have a meaningful debate about educational priorities, and they have an incentive to do so in so far as their municipal taxes pay for schooling directly. Provincial elections do not permit the same type of focus because education policy is just one of a wide range of issues upon which citizens decide to support one party or another. Bill 104 will effectively jettison this local form of public debate and choice.

To judge by his public musings, Minister Snobelen would really have preferred to scrap school boards altogether. But since there are constitutional barriers to doing so, he has truncated their function, while creating in the process huge bureaucracies, stripped of serious trustee scrutiny and located at a much greater distance from local schools.

The proposed Toronto mega-board with 550 schools, 19,000 teachers, 300,000 students -- this is more students than in six of Canada's provinces -- will have a huge administration. How will a board with 550 schools in its jurisdiction be able to canvass local schools, solicit their input in designing policy, or take account of the specific character and special needs of schools in different areas? Far from helping to solve the very real problem of impersonal and remote bureaucracies, Bill 104 will inadvertently compound it.

In effect, the authors of Bill 104 are arguing that the Ontario school system is far too decentralized as it stands, that it has too much local input, with full-time trustees democratically chosen by the local electorate running around visiting schools, attending parents' nights, listening to the concerns of staff, students and parents, explaining the board's policies, hearing about specific needs and problems that need to be addressed.

That's wasteful, apparently. The parents I have talked to in my daughter's school do not consider it wasteful. The salaries plus the office-related expenses of Toronto trustees, the highest paid in the province, comprise just 0.2% of the board's budget. For this we get trustees who are a critical component of the system's accountability to the public. If they are duds, collecting a full-time paycheque and doing a part-time job, we can, and should, replace them. Should they set their own salaries and benefits? No. But neither should you. No politicians should be in a position to vote themselves a raise. The entire process should go to an independent review.

What I would defend, however, is the notion of full-time trustees. If they are paid a maximum of $5,000, as is presently envisaged, most will be able to do no more than attend board meetings. Proper attention to present responsibilities, local involvement and close oversight of the board's administration and policies will be effectively precluded.

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The Toronto Board of Education could be looking at cuts of up to 25%. It has already had its budget cut from $643 million in 1993 to $608 million in 1996, while serving 6,000 more children and adding three new developmentally handicapped schools at a cost of $8 million. Less than 5% is now spent on general administration. So if the entire administration were cut, 20% would still need to be cut from each school and its direct support services.

What would this mean for my daughter's school? The 1995-96 budget for her school was $1,656,011. A 20% cut would be $331,202. If you cut 25% of building maintenance, supplies and photocopying, and library supplies, 50% of the furniture and equipment, international languages, and field trips, one education assistant, one office staff, one caretaker and two teachers, you would still need to cut a further $51,396. This would mean higher class sizes, fewer programs and less support for the remaining teachers.

The Toronto board has worked hard to protect out-of-classroom services as well; they are not frills. Let me give you one example: translation services. Perhaps a quarter of the parents at Ossington-Old Orchard Public School do not understand or speak English well enough to participate in our parent meetings or to read the school newsletter without the benefit of translation. The Toronto board understands what it takes to assure meaningful parent participation in multi-ethnic schools, so it provides this service. That makes our school community more inclusive.

To conclude, we all have an enormous stake in the House's decision on Bill 104, not simply in terms of the bill itself, but because its passage will provide a launching pad for a series of far-reaching, and quite possibly irreversible changes in our public school system that Minister Snobelen has indicated he will introduce in the near future. These subsequent steps are not at all clear to the rest of us, but we can be sure they will be driven, above all, by the government's need to make even deeper cuts in spending in order to pay for its tax cuts, while moving swiftly towards a balanced budget at the same time.

The government needs to face the fact that it cannot realistically keep all the big-ticket promises it made in the Common Sense Revolution. Which ones will you abandon? If you proceed with your tax cut promise on schedule, then it seems inevitable that we shall see the promise to preserve classroom funding betrayed, especially in Metro-area schools that will lose, if this bill passes third reading, the finding sources that have until now paid for the whole of our school systems. I would ask you, respectfully, to reconsider the course of action that you are about to embark upon.

On the back of the handout is the budget for my daughter's school, which the trustee prepared, with, as we can best figure, the worst from the rumours that have come. Unfortunately, we don't have any firm figures, but on the back there is a possible scenario of what her school could look like with these cuts. I just put that there.

The Chair: Thank you very much for taking the time to be with us here today. You have used up your entire 10 minutes. We really appreciate your being here.

EVA NICHOLS

The Chair: May I ask Eva Nichols to come forward. Welcome to our committee. We look forward to hearing your views.

Ms Eva Nichols: Today I'm appearing in front of you as an education and legislation consultant who works with a number of organizations supporting students with special needs, such as the Learning Disabilities Association of Ontario and Voice for Hearing Impaired Children.

You may be surprised to hear that I shall start out by telling you I support the thrust of Bill 104 when it talks about the desire to improve the accountability, effectiveness and quality of Ontario's school system. However, I don't think that what is in Bill 104 will actually achieve those outcomes, so perhaps we need to go back to the drawing board on some of the fronts of what this bill is about.

I have no particular concern about the decision to reduce the number of school boards. I am not wedded to the status quo and in fact supported the recommendations contained in the Sweeney report for reducing the number of school boards in Ontario. Perhaps the time has come for us to make those kinds of changes.

But I certainly see a problem with the recommendation that the new district school board boundaries be established through regulation rather than by statute because this does not allow for any public dialogue or input into the decisions to be made. For example, I have great concerns about the size of some of the proposed school boards, in particular the Metro school board, and the kind of mix we shall see with the amalgamation of urban and rural school boards without any real consideration of the impact on students; for example, London, Elgin, Middlesex and Oxford, which have very different service deliveries.

If such amalgamations go ahead, there needs to be a clear-cut direction to all school boards that they will not deal with this process by eliminating any special services or moving to the lowest common denominator in terms of service delivery. Further, school boards must be made to understand in this and in all subsequent legislation that they must not and will not be allowed to continue to contravene the Education Act, as so many boards do right now.

The size of school boards is not the key factor in the effectiveness of service delivery to students. The most important factors are funding, the level of compliance with current legislation and the attitudes towards meeting the identified needs of learners, rather than focusing on school board philosophy or the desire of trustees to be re-elected. As an ex-school trustee, I am not particularly concerned about the suggested changes to the numbers and remuneration for school trustees. Five thousand dollars is a lot more money than I earned as a newly elected school trustee not that many years ago. However, I do feel that some of the comments on how school trustees are going to function give many people in the community a cause for concern.

In terms of the revised eligibility criteria, this will of course also have an impact on the eligibility of certain people to sit on committees, such as the special education advisory committees. That should be mentioned in this bill.

I understand the decision of the government to establish a process for handing over the reins from the current school boards to the future district school boards.

In principle, I am not opposed to the establishment of the Education Improvement Commission, but I do have some significant concerns about certain aspects of the mandate and function of the commission, as described in part XIV of the act. I urge this committee to make significant changes to this section to ensure that the fundamental principles of fairness, democracy, rights to due process and focus on meeting the needs of all students are part of the mandate of such a commission.

For example, I am very concerned that the commission is not bound by most Ontario legislation, and in particular doesn't appear to have to comply with any part of the current Education Act. The mandate of the commission as described in clauses 335 to 343 of the act should clearly state that the commission must ensure school boards do not contravene any of their legislated duties, either under the Education Act or the Human Rights Code; further, that the commission itself must ensure that it functions within the Education Act; and further, that in managing their budgets and other fiscal commitments, school boards must abide by the current regulation governing the general legislative grants.

As mentioned, I am concerned that the commission is totally immune from the traditional democratic and legal processes contained in legislation such as the Regulations Act, the Statutory Powers Procedure Act, the freedom of information legislation and any challenge in court. This can create significant hardship for students and families within those school boards that are already contravening current legislation and may choose to use the directives of the commission as an excuse for not serving certain students according to their mandate as set out in the Education Act.

Regarding special education advisory committees, with fewer school boards naturally there will be fewer special education advisory committees in place. However, their role will be even more important in advising school boards on all aspects of special education programming and service delivery.

Therefore, I believe Bill 104 should include a clear-cut statement about the continuation of SEACs and cross-reference this to section 206 of the Education Act. If anything, SEACs need to be strengthened and there needs to be a process for a formal link between SEACs and local parent councils.

A key point to achieving accountability, effectiveness and quality, which is after all what Bill 104 is about, is the funding of education and, from my point of view, the funding of special education. Frankly, we simply do not know what the government's intent is in this regard.

The recently released Ernst and Young report on educational expenditures, and in particular what the government and/or Ernst and Young -- it's not entirely clear to me -- consider in-class spending gives significant concern to those of us who actually do understand the funding of education and who deal with meeting the needs of exceptional learners.

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For example, given that the diagnosis of learning disabilities can only be made by registered psychologists or medical practitioners by Ontario law, the exclusion of psychological services from classroom-related funding will significantly disfranchise these students. Without an appropriate diagnosis and intervention recommendations from a knowledgable psychologist, students with learning disabilities are unlikely to have their needs met, nor are they likely to achieve their potential. This will not lead us to improved quality of education.

The act makes no specific reference to funding, so we don't actually know, for example, whether there will be the same amount of funding for administrative or support purposes for each school board regardless of its size or the number of its students. We do not know whether the per pupil costs will be the same regardless of the location and actual needs of a student. On January 13, the minister stated that the new funding model will "fund all students according to their needs" and that the model will recognize "students with special needs." But what this will actually look like and who will make the final decisions we simply don't know.

In conclusion, I strongly urge you, the committee that has been entrusted with Bill 104, to ensure that in section 327 of this act there be very specific recommendations relating to the following points:

That the new district school boards must meet their legislated obligations relating to educating all students, including exceptional students, as these are set out in the Human Rights Code, the Education Act and the relevant regulations under the Education Act.

That the Ministry of Education and Training must maintain its accountability responsibilities as set out in the Education Act and the relevant regulations, such as regulation 306.

That the funding of education in Ontario, as determined by the new funding formula, focuses on the same stated purposes and outcomes as Bill 104, ie, enhancing the effectiveness, accountability and quality of Ontario's educational system.

Without such amendments, this act simply will not achieve its stated outcome.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Nichols, for bringing your perspective and your recommendations to us. You've used up all of your time.

CLAUDIA SOMMERS BROWN

The Chair: May I call upon Claudia Brown, please. Welcome. Thank you for being here.

Mrs Claudia Sommers Brown: I was invited to address the committee today as a result, I presume, of my having submitted a brief to the secondary school consultation office. This brief was submitted on my own behalf as a teacher, but more importantly as a parent of three children who have among them logged 28 child-years in a publicly funded Ontario school system.

The substance of my original brief was devoted to what most concerns any parent of school-age children: What is going to be taught in the classroom? Every aspect of education must be weighed and measured against this ultimate standard: Does it contribute to excellence in education?

The particulars of Bill 104 might seem remote from the concerns of the classroom, focusing as they do on the structure and jurisdiction of the educational bureaucracy, present and future. I will let you in on a little secret here. This is just my view, but I'd be willing to bet it represents the views of many parents. I confess that it matters very little how the administrative layer governing children's education is structured or even, within reason, how much it costs, as long as it does three things: (1) delivers educational excellence; (2) recognizes the primacy of the parent in the hierarchy of responsibility for the welfare of the child; and (3) is accessible and responsive to parental concerns about the conduct of education.

In my experience and that of many others of my acquaintance, Ontario's education system has fallen down on all three of these points. In Bill 104 I do not detect anything designed specifically to remedy this situation and in fact I see some provisions which promise only to aggravate it.

Many parents are very disturbed by the proposed reduction in the number of school trustees. They consider trustees to be the only players in the education enterprise who hold their positions by the will of the people and who are directly answerable to them. Over the years, I have taken only a few opportunities to contact my trustees, usually about matters in the classroom and usually to little effect. The outcome has always been determined by the response of the school principal, whether he or she was sympathetic to my point of view, whether he or she was prepared to exercise authority over the teaching staff. These are the deciding factors in such instances.

While I did spend some years active in the local parent association, including two as its president, I would not call myself an activist, never having taken a role in trustee elections or made presentations to the school board. But I am acquainted with parents who have taken the activist route, and I must conclude that for every parent who is publicly bemoaning the dramatic restructuring proposed in Bill 104, there is probably another one quite ready to say that it can't make things any worse, because we already have an unresponsive bureaucratic monolith as it is, that the accessibility of the system depends very much upon your politics and some parents are consistently shut out.

Just try, as one group of parents did, to prevent a new principal from unilaterally eliminating a phonics-based reading program which had caused a demonstrable improvement in every aspect of that school's performance over several years, and you will see how selectively the current governing structure responds to its constituents.

However, if this government expects to live up to its claims of revolution, its role is certainly a good deal more than just not making things worse. The voter and taxpayer have a right to expect that changes, especially radical ones, will be for the better. The individual parent often feels like he is beating his head against the wall, faced down by an educational establishment of self-styled experts secure in their authority, with the backing of powerful unions. That parent is looking to the proposed radical changes to give him some foothold in the process. I don't think he will find it in Bill 104.

This bill establishes the Education Improvement Commission, whose function, according to section 335, is to "oversee the transition to the new system of education governance in Ontario." I submit that it should more properly be named the Commission for Improvement of the Educational Economy, because there is nothing whatever in its mandate which guarantees that at the end of the day education in the Ontario classroom will improve. Pass Bill 104 and we are really no closer to graduating students who can read and understand the Globe and Mail editorial page, which all too few of them can do right now.

I would also submit that the bill leaves hanging in limbo those structures of governance which have the only real chance of effecting genuine educational improvement in Ontario. I refer to section 335, subsections (g) and (h), under which the commission is mandated to advise the minister "on the feasibility of strengthening the role of school councils over time" and of "increasing parental involvement in education governance." This is not a mandate to recommend a plan of action; it is a directive to contemplate whether the establishment of localized responsibility is even feasible.

This government has been accused of viewing education far too much as a business. There is some validity to that criticism, but I think there is also validity to the criticism that the existing system is at the opposite extreme, having treated its shareholders so shabbily that they are increasingly taking their business elsewhere, and wishing they could take their tax dollars with them. However, I think we must ask this government, what kind of business announces publicly to its shareholders that it plans to reconfigure its whole governing structure by a certain date while it is still in the feasibility study phase of devising some of the new structures which may replace the old ones? The answer to this question is, it's the kind of business which isn't going to stay in business very long.

If this government thinks that its education shareholders are going to be content with waiting to see what place and powers the Education Improvement Commission decides to dole out to them at its pleasure, with, as section 344 stipulates, no avenue of appeal on any such decisions no matter how unsatisfactory, then this government may be surprised to find itself mortally downsized at the next election.

I have a great deal of respect for business. My father devoted his working life to manufacturing. He got his education at one of the world's finest business schools, at the University of Chicago, something he has in common, by the way, with the current president of the University of Toronto. Obviously education and business don't have to be enemies. But my father's teacher, conservative economist Milton Friedman, would be the first to tell you that bigger is not better, that small enterprises and local control provide the highest-quality service, the greatest efficiency and, in the larger realm, the most freedom for the citizen-consumer.

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Bill 104 as it now stands is premature. The role and constitution of school councils is the most important component of the educational governance package, yet it has been left at little more than a footnote in the legislation. The stakeholders in Ontario education include not just parents and educators but all of our society. There is no one living in this province whose future welfare is not affected by whether or not the average graduate of our public school systems can sort out fact from fantasy. There is too much moral, philosophical and political snake oil on the market today for us to allow the perpetuation of an education system whose graduates can barely read the label.

I had the impression when the Harris government took office that real revolution in education was possible. There was a lot of sabre-rattling about standards, for both teachers and students. But based on the shift in focus towards governance and the handing over of curriculum matters to people who are, for the most part, long-time players in the ancien régime, I think the ministry has bought into some pretty serious snake oil itself. Somewhere in this increasingly tight circle of operatives there has to be a role for the parents on the front lines of the local school.

The stakeholders in Ontario education deserve to know precisely how the conduct of education will be governed in this province. If the ministry intends to proceed with restructuring the system without having worked out the role of the school councils, then the message is clear that the important decisions are going to be made at some other level of governance. If school councils were actually intended to do any meaningful work, the government would hardly have risked paralysing itself by leaving these bodies in limbo.

As an aside, I hope the ministry will not hesitate to empower school councils just because of a few strident howls about the potential hijacking of the councils by special interest groups. It is disturbing to note that when people who are critical of the system take the trouble to run for office and convince the voters to elect them, it is called hijacking, but when those who embrace the fads and endorse the status quo get elected, it's called democracy in action.

If people want to argue calls with the little league umpire, they ought to volunteer to coach a team. It's certainly the story in my neighbourhood that it's the same faces who turn up to coach all the sports or lead the Scouts or do the hot dogs and field trips at school, that small group of people, many of them employed full-time, willing to give the time and do the work. These same people will probably turn up on the school councils, where, like everything else, volunteers will always be welcome but will be in short supply.

But at least with school councils it will be the people in the neighbourhoods who are monitoring the conduct of education for those most directly affected by it. You in the ministry must decide and be forthcoming about who should constitute these councils and just how much discretionary power over hiring, funding, curriculum, facilities etc these bodies will have. This way the people of Ontario can intelligently decide just how much power they intend to go on giving to you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mrs Sommers Brown. We appreciate your comments. There will not be any time for questions, I'm afraid.

MICHAEL FLANAGAN

The Chair: Michael Flanagan. Thank you very much for being here. Welcome to the committee.

Mr Michael Flanagan: My name is Michael Flanagan. I live in the city of Toronto, as I have for virtually all of my life. As a child in the early 1950s, I attended Holy Rosary school when school money was very scarce. Everybody made their own way to school, purchased their own supplies and almost everything else associated with schooling. Classes were large, salaries were small, religious communities were committed to teaching and school boards on the Catholic end were dominated by priests.

Since those years, I attended a Catholic high school, St Michael's, and then graduated from university. I spent a few years supply teaching in both the public and separate systems. I was first elected to the Metropolitan Separate School Board in 1978, when the honorarium was $6,000, and during those years have chaired many committees and am presently vice-chairman of the board.

More important, I am the father of four children: one in university, two in elementary school, and a two-year-old who is here today. My wife is a teacher with the Toronto Board of Education.

I point out this because I appear before you as a parent, a citizen, a user of the educational system, and not in my role as vice-chairman of the MSSB. But what is important is that I've been involved in the educational system for many years and I believe I have good insight into the system. I don't contend that the system is perfect, and we all know there is no perfect system of government anywhere, but what I believe is that since the early 1950s, with limited resources, we've always taken steps to bring about improvement.

We now have Bill 104, which if passed will make drastic changes. The sole objective is to save money, with no thought to improving the education of our children. Are these drastic changes taking us back to the educational system of the 1950s?

First, I will make a comment with respect to these hearings. Fortunately for me, I was granted the opportunity to present my thoughts to this committee, but for many, including the MSSB, they will not have the opportunity to comment on these potentially most dramatic changes in education in the history of this province. The largest board in Canada, the MSSB, will not even be heard by this committee.

I believe the bill is being rushed through in order to impose changes before the whole picture is known and before the public has proper awareness and input. What is the rush? Is it unreasonable to ask that the next election be deferred for one year so that the funding model, the new method of curriculum changes, the governance responsibilities etc are developed and discussed? Clearly, in my opinion, there will be little debate or discussion because the government does not want people to know what the plans are. Is it possible that they haven't decided what the plans are?

Let's look at the history of the Ministry of Education since June 1995. Within a short period of time, the Minister of Education says to his employees, "We must create a crisis." So last year the ministry took $400 million out of grants intended for the poor boards in the province. This meant boards either cut programs such as junior kindergarten, or as the MSSB did, cut maintenance, school supplies, repairing school buildings or school yards. Like most boards, the MSSB did it without cutting programs but had to carry a deficit.

This year the ministry announced further cuts of $600 million to $900 million. It probably would have been impossible without property tax increases or major program cuts. Then came Santa Claus, and the announcement came from the minister there would be no cuts, yet in less than three short weeks, the minister introduced Bill 104, the takeover of funding of education, and made other profound changes to education. The fact of the matter is, the government wants to impose these changes without providing any detail and without a comprehensive plan -- frightening, to say the least.

The Bill is flawed. More important, the changes envisaged by the bill are just the beginning of major and much more consequential changes to come. One does not reduce school boards, trustees and honorariums, and implement an undemocratic commission just to save some money. No, we are going for much bigger reductions than these. Why not tell people what these changes are? Of course, this government has to honour its election commitment of 30% tax reduction. It would be reprehensible to do this at the expense of the education of the children.

Bill 104, except for the Education Improvement Commission, does not make major changes, but what it does do is set up the changes to come. All of the changes lead to the obvious questions of why and what is the future plan.

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With respect to constitutional rights and privileges, section 1(4), the change is so subtle that one must ask why. The section as written in the Education Act doesn't need a change unless there is a future agenda with respect to Catholic constitutional rights. I believe the government is setting up for the dissolution of all school boards, and this change is to facilitate the dissolution of Catholic school boards. Why else would the change be made?

There is notable change in board reduction and trustee representation. Board reduction in areas where the boards feel there are advantages are worthwhile, but forcing boards to amalgamate, thus creating huge geographical areas, makes proper representation much more difficult and is unacceptable.

Similarly with trustee representation, reducing trustees reduces representation. Representation is the essence of democracy. It is worth paying the price for democracy. No one disputes the need to bring about some reduction in the number of boards and the number of trustees, but does this government expect to bring about massive savings by this reduction, or is it, I ask, by privatization, outsourcing, province-wide collective bargaining and voluntary parent participation in school councils? This is unacceptable.

There is the eligibility of spouses of employees. First, preventing employees' spouses from running for another board is outright discrimination. I have never had a conflict of interest with respect to my wife. She never gained anything from an MSSB decision. How many members of Parliament, members of the Legislature, members of municipal councils are in similar situations where their wives or husbands are working in various government positions but apparently do not have a conflict?

The Education Improvement Commission is an autocratic body, and in transition it appears to be a watchdog over elected trustees. Not only are they a watchdog, they have power to overturn any financial decision dealing in paltry amounts of $50,000. Also, and more important, they have powers to override trustees and school boards in both monetary and non-monetary decisions.

The decisions of the commission are final and shall not be reviewed or questioned by a court. Is this transitional because we will be going to a new system of governance, that being no school boards at all?

Finally, the role of the school advisory councils. In 1979, I moved a motion at the MSSB which meant that every school in the board would have a parent association, so I very much support parental involvement in the system. It seems clear that the government intends that these councils be empowered to deal with such matters as program, student discipline and assessment. This direction would probably culminate in school-site management. This direction will always fail. The direction will fail because parents will always look subjectively at the system and not objectively as to what is best for the whole system. Also, controversial issues inevitably divide the community, with bitter feelings on one side or the other.

In conclusion, I submit again that this bill is flawed. This bill does not bring about true educational reform in as much as it does not contribute to the improvement of the quality of education, nor does it bring about meaningful changes to education governance. I urge you therefore not to recommend the enactment of this legislation.

Interruption.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Flanagan, for your points of view. Ladies and gentlemen, we're not allowed to applaud.

Thank you also, by the way, for the exemplary behaviour of your two-year-old. He's been quite fabulous.

Mr Flanagan: Thank you. She's just waiting to get into school.

JAN SUGERMAN

The Chair: Jan Sugerman. Welcome. Thank you very much for coming this morning.

Ms Jan Sugerman: Thank you. I have a cold, and I'm a little bit hoarse.

The Chair: We have a mike, so you don't have to strain too much. As you settle, I will tell you that you have 10 minutes to make your presentation. If there is any time left over, the committee will ask you some questions.

Ms Sugerman: I can't actually look down and see up at the same time with these glasses.

My name is Jan Sugerman. I have never done anything quite like this before. I am a parent with two children in a Toronto public school.

It seems to me that there are many things going on here. Do I talk about process? Do I talk substantively about the bill itself? Do I talk about the common thread that links them, democracy?

Thinking about democracy and who speaks made me question what I could say when so many are not being allowed to speak. It is my understanding that so far there have been over 1,100 requests to speak to this bill, Bill 104, in Toronto alone. I have been told that the hearings yesterday and today would allow for only 60 individuals to do so. What about the others? It is simply not good enough to suggest that they submit a written deposition. It has been said, and I believe it to be true, that it is important that we meet, you, the members of the government, and I. We look at each other, each one of us -- Mr Doyle, Mr Brown -- I cannot see your name, sir, and I don't think you've --

Mr Toby Barrett (Norfolk): Toby Barrett.

Ms Sugerman: -- Mr Barrett, Mrs Johns -- and I can't read that far away -- Mr Carroll, it's important that we look at one another, that we see each other in the flesh. Some part of who we are is really here in this room. This is important. To be heard, and, Mr Brown, visibly so, is important.

I wondered when I was writing this, and still do now as I read it to you, who these people are whose voices are not being heard. I have here copies of some of the requests. Here are some of the names of the people who wish to speak to Bill 104 and are being denied.

Can you tell me what the bell-ringing is about?

The Chair: There's a roll call in the House for quorum.

Ms Sugerman: What does this mean for the people sitting here?

The Chair: It means that members of the government are being asked to proceed to the House in order that the business of the House can continue with quorum.

Ms Sugerman: That takes precedence over the hearing here?

The Chair: It does not. We continue. We have quorum, and we continue.

Ms Sugerman: We have quorum here. Okay.

Here are some of the names of the people who wish to speak to Bill 104 and are being denied by this government: Patricia White on Delaware in Toronto; Andy Sos on Clinton Street in Toronto; Louise Lambert on Lynd Avenue in Toronto; Pat Brown on Grace Street in Toronto; Scott Forsyth on Markham Street in Toronto; Marlene Vargas on Montrose in Toronto; Mary Pietropaolo on Euclid Avenue -- Madam, you'll have to tell me when my time is up.

The Chair: I will.

Ms Sugerman: -- Lise Bois on Clinton Street in Toronto; Susan Lukachko on Manning Avenue in Toronto; John Liapis on College Street in Toronto; Sheila Sharp on Palmerston Boulevard in Toronto; Colleen O'Manique on Montrose Avenue in Toronto; Mary Truemner on Clinton Street in Toronto; Sallie Lyons on Manning Avenue in Toronto; Charles Johnston from Pickering; Pamela Bruce on Clinton Street in Toronto; Robin Abraham on Manning Avenue in Toronto; Justine Allan on Leuty Avenue in Toronto; Elizabeth Amer on Ward's Island; Madonna Andras on Ulster Street in Toronto; Robert Atwood on Marchmount Road in Toronto; Meena Arakawa, no address; Don Ballanger on Evelyn Avenue in Toronto; Marie Bamford on Pickering Street in Toronto; Rosa Barker on Concord Avenue in Toronto; Sarah Barker also on Concord Avenue in Toronto; R.E. Barnett on Sussex Avenue in Toronto; Darren Barney on Raglan Avenue in Toronto; Michael Baxter on Royal York Road in Etobicoke; Iain Beaton on Roseneath Gardens in the city of York; Julie Beddoes on Avenue Road in Toronto; Frances Beer on Carlton Street in Toronto; Andrew Bell on Boothroyd Avenue in Toronto; Jean Gilchrist on Albany Avenue in Toronto; James Barry on Kerr Road in Toronto; Chris Berry on Malvern Avenue in Toronto; Robert Biderman on Briar Hill Avenue in Toronto; Ruth Biderman on Alhambra Avenue in Toronto; Anne Black on Morton Road in Toronto; Leanne Black on Shaw Street in Toronto; H. Borden on Strathmore Boulevard in Toronto. Jeff Brendish -- I have to read this: "I would like to speak to Bill 104. Democracy?" He lives on Rathburn Road in Mississauga. Steven Bertum on Sackville Place in Toronto; Louise Bridge on Cambridge Avenue in Toronto --

The Chair: You have about 30 seconds left.

Ms Sugerman: Okay. Katie Brock on Cambridge Avenue in Toronto; and J.P. Carver and H.H. Brooks-Hill on Price Street in Toronto. And I didn't even come close. I started into the Cs, I guess.

The Chair: Thank you very much for coming before us and putting that information before the committee. We appreciate your coming.

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DORETTA WILSON

The Chair: I ask Doretta Wilson to come forward. Mrs Wilson, welcome.

Mrs Doretta Wilson: I have come here today to support the passing of Bill 104. I am a parent of three school-aged children in the Metropolitan Separate School Board.

Ontario is one of the world's largest education spenders, with only mediocre academic results to show for it. Reducing the number of school boards and allowing more local decision-making by school councils can ensure that more education funds actually get spent in the classroom in the most beneficial manner for the student. It's not cuts that hurt kids. It is a lack of clear curricula, ineffective learning programs and unproved pedagogy that hurt and cost more in the long run.

We all have our stories of our own education experiences. My grade 4 class in 1963 had 48 students. Most of us were either newly arrived to Canada or children of immigrants. In my school, the majority were of Italian heritage. English was in most cases not the first language spoken in the home. The separate schools I attended were run on shoestring budgets. Nothing was wasted by the good nuns and lay teachers who taught us. Paper was written on, both sides. Pencils were cut in half and the blackboard was intensively used, just to illustrate a few examples. Yet we all learned well, or none of us would be in the positions we hold here now, including those education bureaucrats who fear the passing of Bill 104.

Today's school budget waste is a common situation. Here's a typical example. At my children's school, the annual operating budget, that is, the amount spent on notebooks, text, paper, supplies and photocopying, but not including salaries or utilities, for instance, amounts to about $80 per child. Approximately one quarter of that budget, about $10,000, is for photocopying expenses, and they're already over budget. My children have at one time even glued photocopied sheets on to blank notebook pages. "What's wrong with using the blackboard and have children copy, reinforcing what they learn?" our school council asked. "Oh, that's too time-consuming," was the response.

I think what it is, is a shame. What a wasteful attitude that has developed over the past 30 years. What tunnel vision exists instead of looking for simple, cost-saving strategies. No wonder parents and taxpayers feel powerless to do anything about this sort of situation. There is no accountability when schools treat parent councils just as cookie-baking PTAs. School councils have got to have some clout.

Waste can also have more damaging long-term effects. The "whole language" fiasco promoted by the education gurus has played a large part in bloated school board bureaucracies and the accompanying skyrocketing education costs. If children aren't learning, they will require special education and remedial work. The number of staff involved in special education is mind-boggling. Remedial reading programs such as Reading Recovery, an example of one widely used, are very labour-intensive and therefore very expensive. Multiply this by the layer upon layer of school boards, administrators, consultants, specialists etc, and you get the picture.

If the school boards would implement effective programs and proven teaching methods to begin with, we would not have so many learning-impaired children and the plethora of consultants who follow. It's time to throw out the leeches and reach for the penicillin. This province can no longer afford to let the current situation continue. There is plenty of money for education, but it is not being spent wisely. Years of mismanagement by school boards have taken their toll. The long-term cost of poor learning is unemployment and accompanying poverty.

The incident of the 10-year-old boy confronting the Minister of Education on the first day of these hearings really bothered me. The boy complained that there are 32 students in his class. However, there are now 37 students in my 10-year-old daughter's class; it had been as high as 39 at the start of the school year, but I'm not here to complain about the size of her class. What distressed me the most is that again our children are the bargaining chips. Class size has been used as one of the red herrings by various groups opposed to education reform.

I feel that teachers' federations are opposed to Bill 104 in the self-righteous delusion that their primary area of concern is for the students. But a union's primary concern has to be for the welfare of its members, or it is not carrying out its fundamental mandate. The status quo is too good for them to give up. If school boards are reduced, what happens to all those consultants and administrators who also happen to be members of those federations? Who really cares about whom? I'm tired of my children being held for ransom.

One of the fundamentals of my faith is that parents are the primary educators of their children. School advisory councils will be crucial to ensure this. They will be the most effective way, outside of the home, that all parents can make sure they have a legitimate voice in the education of their children at the level most directly affecting them en masse, at the school level. School councils exist to provide a forum for input, discussion and advice on individual school community needs.

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Where paranoia about Fascist parents taking over schools began, I can only suspect and probably won't have far to look. I have read that one of the co-chairs of the Royal Commission on Learning does not think school councils will work. Sorry, Mr Caplan; just helping with homework is not enough. Ontario's poor academic showing, both nationwide and worldwide, proves this.

School councils also exist to make sure that education administrators are accountable to us, the school community. They do not undermine democracy. Council members are elected: parents by parents, teachers by teachers. They are accountable to the school because they are elected.

The community at large will still elect trustees. School boards are not being eliminated.

If you truly care about quality education for our children, I know you will support the passing of Bill 104. It may be the only way for our children to receive the resources required in a fair, efficient and effective manner.

The Chair: Ms Wilson, we have three minutes left for questions, one minute per caucus. We begin with the government caucus.

Mr Jack Carroll (Chatham-Kent): You brought up the idea of the cost of supplies. To put it on the record, and for people's edification, based on figures supplied to me for a school board in Toronto, a Metro school board, one that is separate -- I won't identify which -- spends $149 per student on supplies; the other spends $361 per student on supplies. That kind of proves your point that maybe there is some waste there.

Mrs Wilson: There definitely is waste. I've seen it first hand.

Mr Rick Bartolucci (Sudbury): Thank you for your presentation, Mrs Wilson. I'm a teacher with 30 years' experience, and I've had occasion to question expenditures by school boards and by governments. The one I question with regard to 104 is the enormous expenditure that's going to have to take place to set up the Education Improvement Commission.

Do you have problems with the government spending $88,000 per co-chair, and there will be five to seven members at a salary that still hasn't been finalized, and they in turn will set up education improvement committees; the numbers we don't know, the costs, we don't know --

Mrs Wilson: Are you making a statement or asking me a question?

Mr Bartolucci: I'm asking you a question. Are you concerned about that?

Mrs Wilson: No, I have no problem with that if it means long-term, cost-effective savings for the children. I'm tired of money not getting to the kids in the classroom.

Mr Bartolucci: And you honestly believe as a parent that's going to impact positively on your child's education? Does your child have a full-time librarian at school?

Mrs Wilson: Yes.

Mr Bartolucci: Do they have extracurricular activities?

Mrs Wilson: No. My children go to a Metro separate school. We have very little of anything.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Bartolucci. I'll pass it to the third party.

Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): Thank you for coming today. I have four kids in elementary school in Sault Ste Marie and I don't share your pessimistic view of the system as it is now. Certainly there is room for change and room for improvement. My wife, who spends more time at home than I do, spends a lot of time interacting with the school and working with various groups and volunteering.

One of the concerns we have, sincerely, is the size of the classrooms. You mentioned yourself being in a classroom of 48 or something?

Mrs Wilson: That's right.

Mr Martin: Are you suggesting that we go back to that?

Mrs Wilson: No, I didn't suggest that at all. There are studies to show what effective class sizes are. It's not so much the size of the class; it's what's being taught and how it gets taught. Obviously, most of us went through those kinds of classrooms. We are learned, or else you wouldn't be here if you didn't learn how to read and write well. It's how and what the kids are being taught. There are kids in classes with 20 children and they still can't read and write any better than children in classes of larger sizes.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Wilson, for bringing your concern to this committee and for taking the time to be here.

SUSAN MCGRATH

The Chair: Susan McGrath? Ms McGrath, welcome to our committee. We're looking forward to your presentation.

Mrs Susan McGrath: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'll be coming from a bit of a different point of view from our previous speaker today. I live and work in the city of Toronto. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to speak with you. Although I'm addressing the committee from my own perspective, I hope that some of my concerns about Bill 104 will correspond to the concerns of those many individuals who also wanted to address this committee but have so far been denied the opportunity to do so.

As a parent, I would like to state that my child received an excellent secondary school education in the Toronto public school system, a system which is now threatened by the provisions of Bill 104. As a homeowner, although I enjoy living in the city of Toronto where I have been a resident for 35 years, I have serious concerns arising from the impact of Bill 103, another piece of legislation being considered, and I'm equally concerned about the impact of the proposed downloading on the quality of life in my city. However, I would like to speak today not as a parent nor as a resident, but as a citizen who's strongly committed to the tenets of a democratic society and as a long-term employee in the public sector, including the public libraries and the public school system in Toronto.

As a citizen, I have participated in democratic political processes, mainly at election time through door-to-door canvassing. However, until this January I have never felt so passionate about political issues. This government, by proposing to shatter fundamental democratic processes and institutions at the local level in both Bills 103 and 104, has awakened many people such as myself who have occasionally been involved with political action and many more who have never been politically active at all. The government, I hope, will pay attention to the voters from all political parties and different walks of life who are working together to stop this government from pushing through Bills 103, 104 and downloading. If the government has achieved anything positive at all, it has been to create a powerful new opposition to its policies.

What do I think is wrong with the Fewer School Boards Act? First, Bill 104 makes a mockery of meaningful elected representation at the school board level in Metropolitan Toronto. It reduces the number of elected trustees in Metro Toronto from 74 to 22 and limits trustee reimbursement to a maximum honorarium of $5,000 a year. The Ministry of Education and Training's own backgrounder on Bill 104 states that "trustees will no longer take home the equivalent of a full-time salary." As a result, trustees will be working fewer hours while at the same time responding to a larger number of constituents. In fact, the proposed Toronto mega-board will be the largest in Canada, serving 2.3 million people, the same size population as the much-touted Alberta. In Metropolitan Toronto, trustees will be responsible for 310,000 students and 550 schools. This is not a doable job and I think the government knows it.

Second, Bill 104 removes financial control from publicly elected school board trustees. School boards will have no say in the basic education programs which will be determined at the provincial level and no ability to add programs beyond the basic level. Local communities will have no control over the education their children receive. The position of school trustee, which has provided many women and other representatives from disadvantaged groups and communities with opportunities for political participation and leadership, will become irrelevant. With such low compensation, the position of trustee will revert again to candidates who for the most part come from higher income levels.

Third, Bill 104 shifts real power away from local school boards and gives it to the province, establishing for four years an undemocratic and unaccountable Education Improvement Commission. This provincially appointed commission will have decision-making power over restructuring and school board operations during the transition to what the bill calls the "new system of education governance in Ontario," including control of budgets and staffing, distribution of board property and other assets and consideration of outsourcing of all non-teaching functions. The Education Improvement Commission is exempt from the Regulations Act and the Statutory Powers Procedure Act and its decisions are final and shall not be reviewed or questioned by a court and its members are protected from liability.

This government, if Bill 104 is passed, will have the power to plunder and pillage the educational system with impunity, and that is what I am convinced it will do. This government does not have a vision of education for Ontario which would encourage me to think otherwise, nor does it have a record which would foster trust in its motives nor support for its methods.

In July 1995 at a staff briefing, the Minister of Education and Training was videotaped saying: "Yeah, we need to invent a crisis and that is just not an act of courage. There's some skill involved." Bill 104 is predicated on an artificially created crisis which goes like this: The public education system is failing, it's out of control. The government's solution is for a provincial takeover, I would say a hostile takeover, through Bill 104.

Of course the need to improve the education system is something that trustees, education workers, students and parents acknowledge and are actively prepared to support. Positive change is welcome but a wholesale dismantling of the present system is uncalled for.

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Further, the minister has stated that cuts to the amount of $1 billion are necessary to improve elementary and secondary education, a bit of an oxymoron I think in that statement. The minister also states that a new funding formula based on equal per pupil spending across the province with some exceptions for special needs will be developed. This new funding formula has not yet been announced, nor does the legislation identify essential school programs and services.

The Ernst and Young report, announced on January 10, changed the criteria for what should be classified as "outside the classroom." Now we've got outside-the- classroom teacher preparation time, school librarians, guidance counsellors, other professional support such as psychologists, custodial and maintenance services, and the list goes on and on.

The reality is that the system at the present time is lacking the resources in many areas to address issues faced by disadvantaged communities and families in Toronto. If the government's vision of education in this province prevails, our schools will return to the past, perhaps to the days of Enoch Turner Schoolhouse, the location which the minister chose to announce changes to the educational system.

I believe that was a good choice. The Enoch Turner Schoolhouse symbolizes the government's vision of education. At present it's a museum which provides us with an opportunity to study the inequities of the past. It was built in 1848 to provide a free school to the Irish Protestant poor who attended Little Trinity Church. The donor for all this was Enoch Turner, a wealthy brewer, the John Labatt of his day -- perhaps we need a John Labatt Public School in Toronto -- who erected it at his own expense. It was a one-room schoolhouse when it opened and it provided one instructor and 80 writing desks for a total of 240 pupils. It was a church charity school but may be the "back to the future" model which the minister has in mind when the cuts begin.

Working at the Toronto Board of Education, staff are aware of reductions in educational spending, and the figure being talked about is between $1,700 to $2,000 in annual cuts per pupil or a 25% cut to educational funding. These cuts will wreak havoc with programs which promote opportunity for disadvantaged students and which meet special needs. Close to 20% of our elementary students live in poverty. Our board serves over 76 different language groups of students in our schools. Twelve per cent of our budget supports children with needs such as the provision of breakfast programs, reading clinic teachers and social workers.

According to the Toronto Star, Metro has the highest per pupil spending in the province due to a "huge percentage of immigrant children." We have adult education classes and continuing education classes which provide an opportunity for people to continue their secondary education, to learn new skills and to break out of the cycle of poverty and dependency in which they live. We have English-as-a-second-language programs for newcomers to the country. We have anti-discrimination and anti-harassment programs aimed at eliminating racism and sexism within the system and promoting gender and race equity. Our system provides quality education while ensuring that each citizen of the city has equality of educational opportunity, and this government is putting this system at risk.

In closing, I would like to remind the committee members and the government that our current system of education, although it needs improvement, still serves us well. It is a democratic system of governance and finance based on locally elected trustees with taxing powers. These trustees are directly accountable to the voters. The system is flexible, responding to the needs of local communities. In a city with the diversity of Toronto, the educational system has continued to be committed to the provision of equality of educational opportunity for all citizens. It is funded at the present time without grants from the province.

On the other hand, the system contained in Bill 104 and what can be gleaned from the minister's remarks will destabilize, demoralize and impoverish our educational traditions and create a two-tiered education system where those who are most in need will be the least served. I would hope that this committee would recommend to the government to reconsider the massive reorganization of the school boards of Ontario, to slow down, to disclose fully its restructuring proposals and to allow for full and complete consultation on all of the issues.

The Chair: Thank you, Mrs McGrath. You've fully used your 10 minutes. We appreciate your views and the time that you took to come here.

VALERIE MCDONALD

The Chair: Next is Valerie McDonald. Welcome to the committee. We're pleased to have you here.

Ms Valerie McDonald: My name is Valerie McDonald. I am the mother of three girls, two of whom attend Palmerston school here in Toronto and one who had the good fortune to be able to register for junior kindergarten yesterday. I am a founding member of People for Education, a group dedicated to preserving publicly funded education in Ontario.

I have come today to speak on behalf of my eldest daughter, Madeleine. Madeleine is eight years old, in grade 3. She has severe learning disabilities that affect her speech and fine and gross motor skills.

Madeleine struggles to express herself with halting speech and words that mysteriously elude her even though she knows them well. Printing is a slow and painstaking activity for her. Even her drawing has only just moved beyond what is known as the pinhead stage: large heads and long legs and no bodies. However, a couple of weeks ago, we all celebrated because she finally learned to zip up her own coat.

Madeleine has worked hard to develop her skills since she was a preschooler. She received occupational therapy at the Hospital for Sick Children twice a week for two and a half years and got blocks of speech therapy there as well. Once she started school, she got extra help from the Learning Centre, from an educational assistant assigned to her half-time and from the school speech therapist. Now in grade 3, she is in a half-time learning disabilities class at Palmerston with eight students. In the afternoon she is in a regular class with the children she has known since junior kindergarten.

All the extra attention has paid off. She can read at close to grade level and now prints with increased confidence. She participates in class discussions and talks enthusiastically at home about themes of study like food groups or the Arctic. She loves school.

I am very concerned that Bill 104 will adversely affect students like Madeleine, and if students like her are not served well, my other two children, who by comparison seem to learn almost effortlessly, will not receive a good education either because their teachers will be too overwhelmed with meeting the needs of the Madeleines in their classes.

Bill 104 drastically reduces the numbers of trustees who act as advocates for children like Madeleine and who oversee the distribution of services throughout a board. Local school councils are not an acceptable replacement for democratically elected trustees because they don't necessarily care about the needs of all the children in a school. The Education Improvement Commission gives a small number of non-elected officials unprecedented power to change or eliminate programs that will benefit a child like my daughter.

I know we're very lucky to have received such extensive services for Madeleine. However, even in a resource-rich board like Toronto, we had to fight to get every single one of those resources for her. At the end of her kindergarten year, we were frustrated with our IPRC meeting at which board officials seemed very reluctant to provide special education services to Madeleine. They tried to allay our fears about her being lost in a busy grade 1 classroom with talk about how young she was to be separated even part-time from her peers and how important it was to preserve her self-esteem. We wanted concrete services to help her learn. Finally, I called my local trustee who responded immediately and acted as an advocate for Madeleine. She gave us information about the services available, told us who in the board to speak to and outlined the procedures to follow to appeal the IPRC decision. Eventually we got the appropriate services that have since helped her enormously.

At a recent meeting at our school, someone asked a representative of the Ministry of Education to describe the job function of a trustee under Bill 104. The official replied that trustees will provide the same service they do now. Her example was that if your child is sick, you can call the trustee and he or she will help you arrange to have your child's homework sent home.

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Bill 104 proposes to amalgamate all the Toronto boards, creating a new board with a population the size of Alberta. There will be one trustee representing 13,500 students. I don't expect them to arrange the delivery of homework, but will they still be able to act as effective advocates for children like Madeleine? Will I even get through to them in the first place, or will it be like calling the voice mail maze of the Ministry of Education?

Perhaps school councils are meant to supplement the work now done by trustees. Bill 104 says that local needs will be addressed by these volunteer bodies. Will this body be able to advocate for services for my daughter? My suspicion is that they will be busy doing even more fund-raising for the extras like computers, library books, art supplies and musical instruments, which seem to be considered non-classroom expenses by Mr Snobelen. As an active member of my home and school, I'm tired of fund-raising. I'd rather pay my taxes and spend my time helping my children learn.

Last summer on a visit to England I spent a day in a high school in downtown Manchester. Many of the reforms suggested in Bill 104 have already been implemented in Manchester, including the introduction of local councils. When I asked how well the local councils were working, my friend, who taught at the school, said it was a real problem to find parents to sit on the councils in the poorer neighbourhoods. They either did not speak English well enough or were too overwhelmed by their own problems to be able to attend meetings that required a huge time commitment and a willingness to grapple with complex issues. In his own neighbourhood, however, local councils worked hard to raise lots of money to supplement the school-based budgets to provide the very best for their children. A lot of energy was also put into marketing each school in order to increase enrollment and thus increase the total school budget, which was based on a per pupil grant.

I am not opposed to amalgamation per se or even to somewhat reducing the number of trustees. However, Bill 104 goes much too far. It creates a fundamental change in the way education is structured and delivered in Ontario. Locally elected trustees, who are compensated for their work, will act as advocates for all children and will be overseers of a whole system. School councils will look out only for the children in their schools. As I saw in Manchester, we will soon have a two-tiered public education system in Ontario, with wealthy neighbourhoods offering the kinds of programs we all take for granted now and poorer neighbourhoods struggling with inadequate resources and demoralized teachers.

I know the intention behind the legislation is purported to be to reduce waste at the administrative level and to equalize services across the province. I applaud that intention; however, I don't believe it.

I have spoken to many parents across Ontario who have suffered greatly from recent provincial management of education spending. The $400 million cut from the education budget over the last year has already affected the classroom. Music programs, junior kindergarten, bussing, phys ed and library programs have been slashed, and special education support is usually the first program to go.

To cite one example, in Gravenhurst a few weeks ago all of the teaching assistants were laid off. There is now an autistic child in one school who spends the day wandering the halls instead of sitting in class learning. That could be my daughter. Madeleine is too well behaved to wander the halls, but without her learning disabilities class and her assistant to guide her she would likely sit idle in the classroom doing nothing.

Perhaps the most disturbing element of Bill 104 is the Education Improvement Commission. This appointed body of five to seven people will have the power to strip existing boards of their decision-making powers, to monitor their actions, control their budgets, transfer staff and facilitate the privatization of non-teaching services. In essence, this means that boards with well-developed services for special needs children may no longer be able to provide these services, regardless of need.

I am deeply concerned that the Education Improvement Commission's decisions will supersede existing legislation and cannot be challenged in court. Besides being fundamentally undemocratic, what recourse will I have for my daughter if existing legislation about special education is changed or eliminated?

Today in the Legislature Mr Snobelen said that Bill 104 is about reducing waste and streamlining services. But educating a child or an adult is a complex activity that involves many complex human relationships and costly resources.

The Chair: May I ask you to wrap up, please.

Ms McDonald: Okay. The government's legacy in reducing and streamlining over the past year has resulted in lost programs, lost resources and lost children. However, it is not too late to restore adequate funding to our children. When the province sets its per pupil rate, I certainly hope it will look to boards that provide well for special needs students like my daughter. Spending money on Madeleine enriches all the students in the class by providing additional resources that help the Madeleines learn while the freeing the classroom teacher to spend more time with all the children.

As a final note, I must say that at $6,000 or even $8,000 a year per pupil, public education is a bargain. Private school fees for a child like Madeleine range from $12,000 to $18,000 a year. Think about it.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms McDonald. I regret that the time just seems to fly. We appreciate your views and thank you for bringing us your story. Don't forget your picture.

SIM BRIGDEN

The Chair: Next is Sim Brigden. Welcome.

Mr Sim Brigden: I appreciate the opportunity to speak today. Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Sim Brigden. I am currently chair of the Davisville Public School Parents Association. I am also fund-raising committee chair, and I sit on the school staffing committee.

I am very pleased to see that the government is finally doing something about the situation in the public school system. For the last four years, I have been working to ensure that the goals of my school board, the Toronto Board of Education, are refocused on promoting quality of education and excellence in the classroom; it seems that the board has other ideas.

From meetings with school trustees, superintendents, Chairman David Moll and the comptroller of finance, Ron Trbovitch, I can only conclude that the board's primary agenda is to promote its own bloated bureaucracy. The ratio of board staff to classroom teachers remains the highest in Metropolitan Toronto, at nearly two to one. While teachers are dipping into their own pockets to pay for classroom supplies, the board cranks out reams of useless reports about issues which have little or nothing to do with improving education.

From my interpretation of Bill 104, it seems that the Education Improvement Commission will oversee the amalgamation and subsequent election procedures during the transitional period of all school boards in Ontario. The proposed commission will have broad powers to investigate any and all matters fiscal and to control spending during this period. This aspect of the bill is essential. It is imperative that control be wrested from the current boards. They have no incentive whatsoever to trim their budgets, reduce duplication or eliminate waste. What follows from this is the focus of my concerns and one of the reasons I am here today.

Governance of spending at the board level after amalgamation should be entrenched in the bill as well. Annual, external audits with standardized accounting procedures are a must. Currently we taxpayers, despite direct questions to trustees, board staff and superintendents, cannot get a straight answer about such basic information as how many classroom teachers are employed by the board, nor can we accurately tell how many staff are in each department at the board offices. This obfuscation appears deliberate, so that the board can tout the large number of teachers it has on staff, but not necessarily in the classroom, and thereby justify its bloated budget.

In December 1996 I attended a meeting with Chairman Moll and Mr Trbovitch where Mr Moll expressed his shock and disbelief at the province's proposed legislation. At the end of the meeting, Mr Trbovitch said to me publicly, "Oh, yeah, I could have cut 15% from this year's budget, no problem." I was astounded. Here was the person in charge of finance admitting that there was overspending yet admonishing the provincial government because of the restraints that were coming.

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Members, from what I can ascertain, Bill 104 does not go nearly far enough to ensure that past overexpenditures and fiscal malpractice are not repeated; it does not entrench fiscal responsibility as a cornerstone of creating a better educational system. I would like to ask you to review the clauses of the bill pertaining to board fiscal and spending procedures and amend them to include permanent rules with regard to spending, external audits and budget approvals.

My second issue concerns classroom size. During their tenure, the provincial Liberal government set a proposed ceiling on class size at 25 students per teacher. Despite good intentions, this measure did not work. The boards worked around the ceiling by including library, phys ed, music and French teachers in this total. What evolved was that the home-room classes did not shrink and formulae were developed by which staffing models are now driven. The current situation is untenable.

For your perusal, I have attached copies of information given to me by Superintendent Sandy Thompson. This is a spreadsheet showing the ranges and counts of current class sizes in the Toronto elementary system. If I can just explain the spreadsheet, across the top it shows the number of students in a class, and then down one side it shows the type of class: junior kindergarten, mixed classes, right through to grade 8. You'll see that the range runs from 11 students at the lowest level right up to an astounding 36 students in some classes. This is all because of the current model they're using. It's wrong.

I would like to propose the following amendments to Bill 104:

That home-room class sizes be limited to 20 at the junior level of grade school and 25 at the senior levels of grade school and high school.

That library, phys ed, music, French, ESL and learning centre be treated as separate scholastic entities, and others where need be, each of these being allocated resources based on each school's curriculum and student population; and that they be staffed according to formulae determined by a guaranteed minimum minutes of instruction per student per subject per year. What I'm trying to say here is that if there are special needs, if there are special concerns, we allocate those on a guaranteed number of minutes per student per year, so we staff accordingly.

That principals be given complete and full jurisdiction in matters relating to staffing. This would ensure that principals would be held accountable with regard to local staffing issues and problems. It would also free them to select the best teachers available from the teaching pool for their particular school's needs.

That principals should be held accountable to their boards and parents' associations should they fail to perform adequately. Currently, the Toronto Board of Education boasts that we have the most open staffing procedure in the GTA and possibly anywhere. They have this whole rigamarole that you go through to be involved in a staffing committee; it's unbelievable. The reality is that at the school level the staff have final say on the staffing model. Furthermore, the teacher allocation formula is lorded over by a board-appointed committee, which, again, is half comprised of teachers. The upshot of all this is that the staff are managing the staffing. There is virtually no latitude left for the local school staffing committee to influence a decision, and there should be. The lunatics are running the asylum.

Fundamentally, I believe we need a sea change in our educational system, which has lost focus, direction and initiative. The current system is rife with waste, duplication, overspending, political nepotism and sloth. It caters so much to special interest groups that the basic goals of education have been lost in a swamp of self-serving empire-building. Children are losing precious learning time under the current regime. I talked with one of the parents at the school who comes from Iran, and he said: "I can't believe the slow pace at which my child is learning. In grade 1 back home, she was doing cursive writing. That doesn't occur in our school board until grade 3."

I can only laud your efforts to correct the myriad problems facing us and trust that you can entertain my request to do even more. I thank you for your time in considering my request.

Mr Bartolucci: Thank you very much for your presentation, Sim. I introduced a private member's bill called the Smaller Class Sizes Act, which limits the number of pupils who can be in each class, depending on what level of instruction you're looking at. The government, by and large, opposed the measure. However, there were a few individuals on the government side who saw, as you do, the need for smaller class sizes and supported it. It has now passed second reading and it has been referred to this committee. Do you not feel that smaller class size is an integral part of excellence in education?

Mr Brigden: I do, very much so. However, I haven't read the particulars of your bill, sir, so I don't know that I could comment on it.

Mr Bartolucci: Let me tell you the numbers because I think they're important. They are 17 at the junior and senior kindergarten sizes, 23 at the primary level, 26 at the junior levels, which are 4, 5 and 6, 28 at the intermediate level, which is grades 7 and 8, and then depending on the high school course, they diminish from 29 to 20 from advanced to basic level courses. Do you not see that as an opportunity to promote the excellence that you're talking about?

Mr Brigden: I think that would be of interest.

Mr Martin: Thank you for coming today and making your presentation. I'm a father of four children in the school system in Sault Ste Marie, and I don't share your cynicism about the system. You paint actually quite a disturbing picture. Certainly my experience of the people who run the system in my community and the people who work in it -- and I spend a fair bit of time visiting and I know my wife, because she's home more than I am these days, spends a lot of time in the school where my children go to school. Even though there are things that need to be improved and can be changed and everybody's working at that, she doesn't paint the same picture that you've painted here today of those people.

Are you saying to us that all of the people in education out there today are as you describe them in your presentation? I think some of the words you used were quite descriptive. Is that truthfully your view of the system out there today?

Mr Brigden: I have been trying for four years to get the board to, first, open up its budgeting process so we know how their money is spent. We don't even know how that's done. Mr Trbovitch is a very capable person with his budgeting process. Second, I'm very fortunate. I have a school at Davisville where we're lucky to have a good set of teachers and an excellent principal. They're not getting the support they require from the board. The board is more of a hindrance than an asset to them. You may be most fortunate in Sault Ste Marie in having a better board than we do. We don't have a good board in Toronto. It doesn't care about us.

Mr Tom Froese (St Catharines-Brock): Thank you very much for coming. I really appreciate your comments and you certainly are involved, as you stated here, in your school. I would assume that you would appreciate more parent involvement in the school system across Ontario. What advice could you give us to enhance the school councils across the province?

Mr Brigden: I think the first thing is that right now it's very difficult to get names of other parents who are at the school. That would be a very modest first step. Certainly for us, you have to sort of go around back rooms to get it. These are things that should be available to the various school committees so that they can get more involvement going. That's a very meagre but essential first step.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Brigden, for being here today and sharing your views with us. We as a committee appreciate it.

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JOHN DOHERTY

The Chair: Next is John Doherty. Welcome. We're pleased to have you here with us.

Mr John Doherty: Thank you for the opportunity to make this presentation this afternoon. My name is John Doherty and I am a trustee for wards 11 and 12 in the city of Toronto. I have been elected to this position for three consecutive terms.

While there are many important aspects of the bill that I would like to comment on, finance is the most important issue. Bill 104 removes the boards of education's right to the property tax base. With this change, the single most important way parents and local community members can influence school policy is removed. Local boards of education have used their access to the tax base to develop programs that best suit the needs of each school. In Toronto we have used our tax base to meet a wide variety of educational needs. These programs have contributed in a significant way to the quality of life in the city.

Schools have become the community hub. They are the centre of the lives of the neighbourhood's children. They are the place where local community associations can meet. Immigrants can get a start in their new life by learning English. Seniors can take a course which keeps them in touch with the world around them. The school is often the local park. The local child care centre or parenting centre supports the families in a cost-effective manner. These all contribute to a safe and vibrant community.

These programs are all threatened. Even if the Minister of Education only goes partway down the road of the cuts he has talked about, my community stands to lose many valuable programs. The Minister of Education and his parliamentary assistant have repeatedly stated over the past year that we overspend by $500 to $600 per pupil in this province, even though this is a figure that has already been discredited as it does not include Ontario in that calculation of a national average.

If we are to take him at his word and fund all students equally, the schools in my ward will be devastated. What this will mean to the 15 schools in my ward is a loss of over $7 million, potentially the equivalent of 128 teachers. Tell me this will not hurt the classroom. And this is not the worst-case scenario. These types of cuts will be made after the administration has been completely eliminated.

These calculations are based on the assumption that when the Minister of Education and his parliamentary assistants are speaking in public, they are being straightforward and honest. I challenge the government members to provide an answer to the government numbers and to tell the parents and students what your real plan is for education.

The real problem is that government is asking the public to buy the stripping of school boards' right to decide their own budget and raise taxes without showing them the new funding formula or the level of funding they are willing to commit to the system.

I believe the position of the Metro school board is the correct position. The government should withdraw this legislation until it can show the people of Ontario how the system will be funded and how the government plans to meet its commitment to protect the classroom. This position of the Metro school board was adopted unanimously by trustees from across all political parties and across all six municipalities in Metro.

Parents and students need a guarantee that the current classroom supports and class size will be there after the funding change, at a minimum.

Bill 104 provides the government with such sweeping powers that it need not return to the Legislature for any further amendments to the education system. Any other changes the government may want to pursue in the future will not have to undergo the scrutiny of the House or the public. This is both dangerous and undemocratic.

Why does the Minister of Education need the power to override any act of the House or any other part of the Education Act? What is the government afraid of? If your proposals for change are so good, why do you need section 349 of the Fewer School Boards Act, which allows the minister to override any other piece of legislation? There can be no defence for such a section of the act.

Parents across wards 11 and 12, and indeed parents across the city, are appalled that programs that have met the needs of their children could be wiped out with such little debate and discussion. Attempts to get government or ministry representatives out to public meetings have been nearly impossible. Is this what parents are to expect in the future when trustees are an afterthought in the educational system and power is centralized in Queen's Park?

What makes the government so sure that a highly centralized Mowat Block bureaucracy has all the answers? Despite the best-meaning civil servant in Queen's Park, and I know there are many, they cannot possibly shape a one-size-fits-all education system for a province as diverse as Ontario. The changes in Bill 104 will strip local communities of any ability to mould the school system to the local environment. The all-knowing Mowat Block will be the source of all power.

The government should heed its own direction to the classroom teacher: Let's establish some benchmarks for a revamped school system; let's set out some measurable goals for ourselves; let's look at the supports needed to achieve these goals; let's look at time lines for getting there.

Some modest goals would be smaller class sizes in our elementary school system. We could set out a goal of a well-supplied library for each school; students coming to school prepared to learn -- we need nutrition programs; develop a strong early childhood education program for all young students; commit ourselves to a system that develops a love of reading, writing, music and math at an early age; set some targets for reducing levels of illiteracy among our entire population; commit ourselves to a goal of increasing our graduation rates; commit ourselves to meeting the educational needs of all our special needs students in a setting that is appropriate to their learning abilities. Above all, let's commit ourselves to a school system that meets the needs of the students and the learners, not a short-term political agenda.

Our education can be so much more that an educational ledger sheet. As one teacher asked me last week: "Let's have these people who are making these decisions and voting on these issues come visit my class for a week. Let them see the successes and challenges our school system faces every day."

If you take up this challenge, you will know you cannot call our system "broken." You will see a system working hard to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. It's time you slowed down and listened to what the parents are really saying, not what you want to hear.

We in Toronto and in Ontario can be proud of what we have built in almost 200 years. No system is perfect. No system guided by politicians and run by people will ever be perfect. Can we do better? You better believe it. Is the system broken? Absolutely not.

In closing, I would like to thank you for this opportunity to make this presentation this afternoon. All members of this committee need to carefully look at the things we've been able to do together. Education is too important for the instant quick fixes Bill 104 sets out. Please, let's take the time and build something stronger, not something we will live to regret for another generation.

The Chair: Mr Doherty. You've used up all of your time. We thank you for coming and sharing your views with us.

JANET ALLEN

The Chair: Janet Allen is next. Welcome, Ms Allen, to our committee.

Ms Janet Allen: Thank you for letting me speak today. My name is Janet Allen. I'm a teacher. I'm also a parent of a very young little girl who's not ready to go to school. I'm a secondary school ESL teacher at Winston Churchill Collegiate Institute in Scarborough. Typical of Scarborough, our school is comprised of 10% to 15% ESL students from all over the world; 55% of the school's students speak a language other than English, with 42 languages in total at Churchill; 35% have been in Canada less than five years.

I enjoy my job, and I look forward to seeing my students, who are for the most part eager to learn. My classes are essentially multilevel as, despite the designated grades of English competency, there is a wide range of abilities in spoken, aural and written English. I have adolescents ranging from 14 to 19, as well as adults as old as 42, and that's in just one of my classes. Some adolescent students have few school skills, while others have little general knowledge, usually because of interrupted schooling due to war, poor standards in their own country or poverty.

My students come from China, Taiwan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Poland and Somalia. It is challenging, but I enjoy the diversity, their enthusiasm, positive energy and exposing them to Canadian culture. Because of this diversity in cultures, ages and abilities, I must have a plan of what I want them to accomplish every day.

In a semestered system, time is tight. Plans and objectives are crucial. What plan have I mapped out for the term so that they can comprehend and successfully pass the unit, acquiring the necessary skills along the way? What plan have I developed for the semester so all these students, with their varied abilities, cognitive or affective, can walk away from my class with a more sophisticated level of English and succeed in other classes?

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Plans are important, and in Bill 104 I see no plan, other than a fiscal one. How will ESL students in my class, students in our school, in Scarborough, in Metro, in the province, benefit from this fiscally based piece of legislation? Does this bill plan to improve the quality of education? If so, then why remove the library and the teacher-librarians, who understand educational pedagogy, where my students frequently are found accessing resources, using computers, renewing books? Does this bill plan to improve the quality of education? Then how can music be left unscathed, unaffected by these cuts? I learned to play the cello in school and am able now to pass on that skill to others at Churchill. How can extracurricular sports be left unaffected by these cuts? These are all necessities in a healthy school environment and give many an opportunity they wouldn't normally have.

This bill proposes to improve accountability. How will I describe this word to my students? Are they widgets? Shall I ignore their abilities and needs, throw away well-thought-out, formative, summative assessments and outcomes, regress to the 1960s and teach solely to the test? My head is spinning as I see Bill 104 sliding down a very steep, slippery slope, with educators and students falling quickly behind.

How will I convince my students, even non-ESL students at Churchill, to have their parents become involved in a parent council? This is outrageous when parent turnout at parent-teacher afternoon and night is 20% on a good day; these are Canadian families, struggling, frequently working shifts. ESL parents are another story entirely. Despite our efforts with translators, parent turnout is poor. If they are in the country, they're often too frightened or too busy trying to keep their heads above water. These parents see school as a separate world, a world where their input would be considered aggressive, essentially beyond their imagination. The parents who do become involved are so minimal and they have their own agenda: their kids. An objective body, above a parent council, is critical.

If boards of education are vaporized, can I be sure my students will be safe in school? Scarborough's zero tolerance policy has been very successful in reducing weapons. How can my students be guaranteed a feeling of safety? Some kids are afraid, those with and without weapons. Their abilities to resolve conflicts successfully are unsophisticated, despite teacher instruction. I do not believe this is a problem special to Metro.

Finally, how will I describe to my students the education review commission, a power-wielding force of five to seven people who may retain expert services to assist it in its work? Who are these experts anyway? A select number of exclusive bureaucrats, quickly working their way to nervous breakdowns due to job overload. An unelected group of people busily forging a chunnel to destinations unknown. The work this commission has to do is overwhelming and frightening, butmost importantly, it lacks vision; it lacks a plan.

Our province is so diverse, so complex, and our schools should reflect that. Schools must give students a level playing field in order to achieve. How will Bill 104 do this? Thank you for your time.

Mr Martin: I share your enthusiasm about the system we have in place now. As I've said before this afternoon, I have four children in the system in elementary school, and they are really excited about school. They're learning a lot, and I'm hoping they will continue to be able to do that. It's valuable that you focused today on some of the things you have, because we sometimes forget that when we look at the bigger picture.

The sense is that the product we're producing is mediocre. Certainly that's not my experience of it in the school system. Is there anything in your experience that indicates that is in fact what we're producing at this point in our system?

Ms Allen: My only concern is class size. Mr Bartolucci has mentioned that. That's a main concern. I think there is room for improvement; I would never say that there isn't. That would be foolish. But the problem of improving has always been a contentious one in government, and it seems to change every five years -- OSIS outcomes and now what? I don't know. It feels like a make-work project sometimes. But I would say class size is an issue.

Mr Carroll: Thank you for your presentation. On page 2 you ask a question: "Does this bill plan to improve the quality of education? If so, then why remove the library and the teacher-librarians?" Where in this bill is that even mentioned?

Ms Allen: I'm being provocative. I'm assuming, because of various things that have been said by Mr Snobelen, that might be a problem because of what is considered classroom and what is considered not classroom essentials.

Mr Carroll: But nowhere have we suggested removing teacher-librarians and librarians, have we? We've never suggested that anywhere.

Ms Allen: Perhaps not in a bill but perhaps outside.

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): You are quite right, that in the $6 billion described as out-of-classroom expenditure, and therefore somehow seen as being ripe ground for finding $1 billion, teacher-librarians were in that out-of-classroom group.

Ms Allen: That's right.

Mrs McLeod: There's another figure that is often used by the minister, and that is that we're 10% above the national average in our spending per student. I think in fact we are about 2% above the national average in our spending per student, and that's equivalent to about $165 per student. I wonder if you feel that being 2% above the national average is justifiable, given the particular challenges you face as a teacher in Ontario and in Toronto.

Ms Allen: Certainly in Metro. I understand the inequities in the province, but in Metro there are many needs in terms of ESL. As I've mentioned, some of the people I have in my class do require a lot of attention, and it's not just a language problem, it's a social problem as well, because of where they come from and the things that are happening in other parts of the world.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Allen, for being with us and sharing your views.

MAIA RYZYJ

The Chair: Maia Ryzyj? Welcome. Thank you for being here today. You have 10 minutes for your presentation.

Ms Maia Ryzyj: My name is Maia Ryzyj. I'm a grade 13 student, an OAC student, at Holy Name of Mary. It's a secondary school in Mississauga.

Mrs Helen Johns (Huron): My alma mater.

Ms Ryzyj: I've been following the actions of the Ontario government for quite some time. What I've seen so far, I have liked very much. First, I would like to start off by congratulating the present government for keeping up with its mandate. I am happy to see that someone is finally revolutionizing the system. It takes leadership, intelligence and initiative to implement changes to services; an example is cuts. Those abovementioned attributes were obviously sadly lacking in the two previous governments in Ontario. It doesn't take much intelligence or any type of management skill to give money away which isn't available in the first place. It does, however, take sound management skills to clean up the bureaucratic mess created by the past two governments. It is my belief that Bill 104 is a cleaning agent for this mess.

When I think of the school boards, feudalism comes to mind. We presently live in a democratic society, so why is it that our school boards function within a feudalistic system, bureaucrats on top of the pyramid and students and teachers at the bottom? I don't think it is right to have money which is supposed to be going to the students trickling down the pyramid of administration before a small percentage of the money finally reaches the classroom.

Every year, teachers are faced with receding budgets, preventing them from getting supplies necessary to provide students with adequate education. As students, we are forced to use books which are old, making them outdated in relation to our courses.

To my understanding, school board administrators were hired to perform a part-time job. They have now taken that position and turned it into a part-time job with a full-time wage. I see something wrong with a system that cuts spending and turns around and gives itself a 30% wage increase.

In the five years that I have attended high school, I have not once met or even heard of the trustee who is supposed to represent me. There are no letters sent to our homes showing some accountability to the parents and students for the money which the trustees spend on the golf courses and exotic trips. There is no explanation forthcoming when asked why school boards build architectural monstrosities.

It is this lack of accountability which makes me sympathize with residents who protest the 5% tax increase which is implemented every year. Residents who don't have children attending schools have a right to revolt against having to pay for other kids, especially if they don't know if the money is really going to the classroom and not the pockets of the bureaucrats; $50,000 a year can buy a lot of books, supplies, computers etc, but that is precisely how much a school board administrator gets paid, if not more.

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Basically, for a long time I have felt that school boards were unnecessary, especially when driving in Mississauga, up on Hurontario Street, one sees these huge buildings which are facing one another and one has a huge fountain. Upon entering the building, there is not a person in sight. It's like a dead building standing there. I don't know how it can be used differently, since that's the single use it seems to be built for, but I don't think it's necessary to have these two buildings which are empty -- or it seems like they're empty -- standing opposite each other in the first place.

I have spoken with many of my teachers, many of my fellow students, many administrators, many other residents and also with many seniors, who basically feel like I do, that they shouldn't be paying for our education. Personally, I think what the government is doing with Bill 104 is basically right, where it's trying to upgrade students' education, because we won't upgrade education if we don't have money to buy textbooks.

In my OAC geography class, which is world issues, we presently use books which are basically five to 10 years old. These textbooks are totally out of date. World issues is a course where you have to keep up to date. We don't have the resources in our school for that type of course, so we are forced to use other resources like articles and listening to the news and so forth. Basically, that's what I wanted to say.

Mr Toni Skarica (Wentworth North): I enjoyed your presentation. I've been in Mississauga as well, and I've actually been in some of the classes. What I found amazing was that in some of the high schools they had a $300 budget for books and there were virtually no books. Has that been a problem throughout your high school career?

Ms Ryzyj: Yes, it has been. I spoke with many teachers who basically -- well, they don't complain. They speak to us and try to explain to us why we're using outdated textbooks. I know last year, when I was in grade 12, I took one course where my teacher said, "We have a dilemma." He's the head of the social sciences. What he said basically was, "We either get books, which is a complete set for about 30 to 45 students, for this course or for another course." So basically every year they try to juggle between which course is more important. Is it the OAC, the grade 12, the grade 10, the grade 11? You don't know.

Mrs McLeod: I appreciate the concerns about the adequacy of textbooks, because that's a concern we hear regularly from both students and teachers. Given that, I think you might be interested to know something which concerns us, and that's that the Ministry of Education wanted to set out where it thought it could get savings from Bill 104, from the amalgamation of school boards. They weren't able to find a huge amount of money, it's $150 million out of a $14-billion budget, but what concerns me is that even to find that $150 million they had to identify savings of almost $10 million out of classroom supplies and equipment. I would think that would concern you, given the fact that you feel that classroom supplies and textbooks are really not adequate now.

Ms Ryzyj: It is a concern to me. Reading all the backgrounders and all the information given on Bill 104, I believe that even if it is, let's say, $20,000 given to each high school, or even to our high school, it's going to mean a great deal to us.

Mrs McLeod: Could you refer me to the backgrounder that suggested it would be $20,000 that would come to your high school?

Ms Ryzyj: I'm just giving out a number. It's not that I have it that it's going to be given to us. I'm throwing out the number.

Mrs McLeod: Is there something that's been given to you to suggest there'll be more money for schools under this?

Ms Ryzyj: Teachers?

Mrs McLeod: More money for schools.

Ms Ryzyj: Yes. That's why we're cutting down on school boards.

Mrs McLeod: I'd be really interested if you had copies of the backgrounders. That would be informative.

Mr Martin: I also want to thank you for coming today. You're obviously a very bright, articulate product of the system that is in place and I guess we can all be happy for that. You made a comment that there were people you spoke to who said they shouldn't be paying for education. I'm not sure if I heard you right. Would you mind explaining that and what they meant by that?

Ms Ryzyj: Basically, a lot of them were seniors. I am involved in a lot of extracurricular activities where I come in contact with seniors. Also, due to a family thing, I spent a lot of time at the hospital where I also had an opportunity to speak to some seniors. For one reason or another, hearing that I was a student we got talking on the topic of education. I really can't explain how we got on to the topic of how much taxes go towards education. They were just saying that they feel it's kind of unfair for them to pay the taxes since either their kids are already out of school or they've never had any kids.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Ryzyj. We appreciate your coming here. It's good to hear from articulate young people.

MADHAV UPADHYAY

The Chair: Madhav Upadhyay is next.

Mr Madhav Upadhyay: Right from the bottom of my heart, I am so delighted and elated to see all these people I have seen on TV. Now I can see you in person. I'm not saying it to please you; I'm expressing my real feelings.

My name is Madhav Upadhyay. I'm here as a parent. I have been in Toronto for the last 20 years, so you can see how long I've been seeing your faces, watching all these great people.

The Chair: You have 10 minutes for your presentation, Mr Upadhyay.

Mr Upadhyay: Yes, I know. I am just getting there. If I don't finish in time, tell me.

What I am saying is that I am compelled to come here. I don't like politics, I don't want to be involved, but this is something, education, that is of concern. I am here as a parent, as a community worker and as an educator, which I have been for the last 20 years. I have two kids in the Toronto public school system; one is at the University of Waterloo and one is in grade 7. I live in the ward 11, ward 12 area where there are new arrivals. We have lots of South Asians, new immigrants. This is an area where you have the largest South Asian community and where different languages -- Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi etc -- are spoken. This is where you have the Tamil co-op building.

The reason I'm mentioning this is that this is a very special area with special educational needs. It's very easy for me to say, "I don't have money; I cannot help you," but if you are in that situation, you appreciate it more. As I said, I am a community worker. I have donated my time and I am still doing it. These are special educational needs: ESL, linguistic needs.

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People keep mentioning extracurricular activities. I don't call them extracurricular activities. For me, these are part of the curriculum. I don't call going to school just learning the books. That's only curriculum. Learning music, going to swimming classes: I call that curriculum. It's part of it because there is a whole learning, where children will be learning academic things in the school, but when they are participating in swimming and music, as both my children have -- I'm really proud of them; otherwise they wouldn't do it -- they learn leadership and there is so much sharing of things, sharing of ideas.

I'm not lecturing here. I want to emphasize this. I have been doing this for the last 20 years. In that area it is the eighth year that we do South Asian Heritage Day. I am proud to tell you that eight communities come together once a year and they participate, and it's only because the Toronto board system has a community relations or community services office or whatever. They give all the facilities. I've been told, "We're cutting and next year you won't have it." I feel this way: that we are muzzled. There's a phrase going around: "Sorry, we cannot do it; we have no money." I cannot stop eating if you have no money. Education is a basic right, not a privilege.

I want to say out of my heart, because I've experienced people who come and they cry, that people have social needs. In the schools what is happening now is we are spending more time disciplining the kids because their families are broken. We are spending less time on academic things. I'm not exaggerating it. Since last year there have been some educational cuts and I can see there's a negative atmosphere in the school. The teachers are tense, which is being reflected on the kids. I have seen mothers come to one of my offices and they're literally crying, "How can we do it?" We say: "What can we do? There is no money." These are real-life situations. There's no politics involved here.

I must say this: Amalgamation is an excellent idea, but education is something that is special. There should be accountability, no question about it. I am for it. There should not be any misuse of the system, but I must emphasize that you just cannot ignore the needs of the community, and you cannot say that what you need in north Toronto, you have the same needs in south Toronto or west Toronto. I cannot emphasize it more, because I have been in it for the last 20 years. That's what I wanted to say.

What is going to happen is that amalgamation is going to mean losing local control. You cannot meddle with the culture, okay? People are so attached to the culture, and culture and education are related. I want to emphasize this. You can say: "We don't have money. We can't have cultural programs." Think of what I have seen happening because of the cultural programs. We come together, we learn about ourselves, we share our ideas. If we don't get together and we are worried about, "I don't have a job; I cannot go because I cannot live" -- which is really brought into my heart because I happen to be working in a school which has integrated language classes.

People don't like to hear about international languages, "This is a waste of money," and everything else. But I'll tell you this is a testimony, this is the truth, no politics here: I have worked at Pauline Public School for five years and I have worked at Dovercourt Public School where you have integrated international languages. I have seen that whenever there is a cultural program with all the communities, the auditorium is full; there is no room to fill when there is a regular thing.

I'm just telling you what I have seen, things happening. It's not something where I'm speaking with a board or something like this. The principals are elated. I said: "Can you see the difference? You may disagree on something but see the proof right here."

Please, let us be realistic rather than saying, "We don't need languages." Languages are even more important now because of the Internet and everything. You know it is global. Actually, I cannot preach about languages; you know very well.

Another thing is that I feel so proud to be in the public education system. I've been working there and I'm a role model. When I see a child and they see me, you have to see the face of a child, how that child is open and able to express. I don't know whether I'm just speaking for nothing, because what I have seen: "We have heard this before. It doesn't really matter. We know what we are doing. We are professionals." No, I don't claim myself to be a professional. I can only say I have experience in a certain area. Each of us is professional at something.

In this government, with due respect to everybody else, they claim: "We are professionals. Everything else was going wrong before. Now we have common sense." People don't have common sense? What is the matter with people who say "common sense"? People lose their common sense. They are so involved with their ego because they're in power. They think: "Whatever we are doing is right and everybody out there is dumb. They don't know. We are in power. We can do anything we want." If I say the same thing in school, the children are saying: "What are you doing? Are you upset?" "Yes," I said, "I'm upset because I cannot teach you what I want to teach you."

The children are upset. There are 30 or 35 kids. I cannot give special time to this little kid who just came from India or Pakistan or wherever, who is so smart but cannot speak or express himself and has been classified, "He should go to a special class because he doesn't know." That's wrong. Just the last word: I have helped 10 kids in my life in 10 years who were classified that they were dumb, that they didn't know. When I went there for interpretation, explanation, IPRC meeting, the whole thing had turned around, and after two years they were gifted kids.

The Chair: Mr Upadhyay, thank you very much for coming. I regret having to stop you --

Mr Upadhyay: If I have gone overboard, pardon me, but I have to speak what parents want me to speak.

The Chair: I regret time goes so quickly. Thank you very much for being here.

DAVID CAPLAN
DARREL SKIDMORE

The Chair: David Caplan and Darrel Skidmore, please. Welcome, gentlemen. We're delighted to see you. As you probably know, you have 10 minutes for your presentation. We look forward to hearing your views.

Mr David Caplan: At the outset, on behalf of Mr Skidmore and myself, I'd like to express our appreciation for being allowed to make our presentation today.

We are here today on behalf of the 300,000 students in Metropolitan Toronto, their families and communities, and the public school boards that serve them.

Metro is unique. We appreciate that every community in the province is unique, but in terms of education Metropolitan Toronto simply cannot be treated as just another school district. The 300,000 pupils housed in 563 school facilities across the city make up a student base larger than six Canadian provinces as a whole.

We have a concentration of special needs, high-risk students and families that demand a range of services to a degree unlike anywhere else in the province. Thirty-three per cent of Metro students have been in Canada for less than four years. We provide 44% of all day school ESL programs across the province -- 70 different languages and dialects. The low-income rate provincially is about 11%; in Metro it is this number and 50% more.

In large urban centres across North America there is poor student performance, yet here in Metro the contrary is true. Metro's schools perform very well. In 1995 the Ministry of Education conducted province-wide tests in reading and writing of grade 9 students. Metro students outperformed the provincial average. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and Detroit all performed below their state norms. Clearly we're doing something right.

1750

The success of our schools has not gone unnoticed by the public. An Environics poll in November 1995 showed that 83% of respondents with children in the public education system in Metro were happy with their children's education. Given this success, it is not surprising that representatives from other major urban boards across North America are going to convene in Toronto next year to look at a large urban school system that is successful.

The public school boards in Metro have been leading advocates of innovation and change. We believe significant improvement is always possible, and I'd like to cite two examples.

Metro's cooperative services represent a dramatic move forward in promoting efficiencies to services in support of education. The newly established purchasing and warehousing cooperative represents annual savings of $12 million, through price advantages from greater purchasing power and reduced operating costs from combining several purchasing operations into one. Expanded cooperative efforts are certainly in the works.

The second example is that the Metro discussion paper on a proposed school services authority introduced an innovative approach to governance and administration which provided for local autonomy, greater equity, the cost-efficiencies of a large operation and the responsive service delivery of smaller accountable units. This paper was shared with and considered by the GTA Task Force, the Who Does What panel and the Ministry of Education. We urge the government to take another look at this model before plunging ahead with the dangerously inadequate Metro structure envisioned in Bill 104.

The critical yardstick for change must be whether it better meets the needs of children in our community. We believe in continuous improvement. We share the long-term goals of greater accountability and streamlining of the education system as a whole. Bill 104 will not meet these objectives.

The new Toronto District School Board, as proposed in Bill 104, will have 300,000 students. The Sweeney report, a document which I might add this government is quite fond of quoting, concluded that school boards with enrolments between 5,000 and 55,000 would be considered optimal. The Sweeney panel noted there could be exceptions, but certainly contemplated nothing approaching 300,000 students. Ask yourself the question, is there a school board anywhere with 300,000 students that you wish to emulate?

The Minister has said the province is moving to centralized funding. Where is the responsiveness and where is the accountability in a system where the major budgetary decisions are made at Queen's Park, far removed from the schools? This proposal is particularly ominous for Metro, where aging schools have created extraordinary capital needs identified as $1.3 billion. More important, what guarantees do citizens, parents and students of Metro have that their unique program needs will be met by a centralized funding model?

This bill puts democracy on hold. An appointed commission, above the law and out of reach of the public, will be in charge. It is strange and sad that a system focusing on the teaching of democracy, both in theory and by example, is being subjected to the undemocratic principles at the heart of Bill 104. What is the message we are sending to the young people of our province? "As ye sow so shall ye reap." That is not a future I think any of us want to contemplate.

The government's plan to take $500 million away from Metro's public schools is unconscionable. Make no mistake about it, you are tearing out the social fabric of Metropolitan Toronto, and the long-term cost in economic and human terms is incalculable.

In conclusion, let me pose some questions, and I might add that until these questions are answered, Bill 104 is simply unacceptable.

(1) Will you promise that no further cuts will be made to education until it is determined what programs are essential?

(2) How will education dollars be monitored, and what is the reporting mechanism for public scrutiny?

(3) What is the definition of "classroom costs"?

(4) How will the funding model recognize the multitude of special needs of students, particularly in a community as profoundly diverse as Metropolitan Toronto?

(5) Can the government guarantee that students and parents will not suffer as a result of the changes being proposed?

Does Bill 104 come with such a guarantee? No, it doesn't.

Our Metro school system has much to be proud of. It should have been built upon, not decimated.

Mrs McLeod: I think you've posed critical questions to which as yet we have no answers in terms of funding. I wonder if you would just take those 60 seconds now left to tell me where the $500-million figure comes from.

The Chair: Excuse me, Mrs McLeod, that's 90 seconds in total.

Mrs McLeod: Oh, in total.

The Chair: You will have 30 seconds.

Mr Caplan: That figure is directly out of John Sweeney's report which shows that $500 million will be extracted. If I might add, the proposals of Bill 104 go beyond that report. My fear is that the potential model could even go beyond the $500-million figure.

Mr Martin: Thank you for coming today and making this presentation. At the beginning you said you're here today on behalf of 300,000 students, their families, communities and the public school workers who serve them. In what capacity do you speak on their behalf?

Mr Caplan: I am the current vice-chair of the Metropolitan Toronto School Board. Mr Skidmore, would you introduce yourself, please.

Mr Darrel Skidmore: I am the director and secretary treasurer of the Metropolitan Toronto School Board.

Mr Martin: I just think it's important that anybody out there who doesn't know that knows who you are. I think that therefore gives some further credence to the excellent presentation you've made today.

Mr Jim Brown (Scarborough West): It was a good presentation. I'm right next door to Toronto, on the other side of Victoria Park Avenue, and that 20-foot band of asphalt really means the cost of $1,000 extra per student. I think your cost is around $8,000 and Scarborough's is around $7,000. It's curious, because the types of people don't change at Victoria Park. They blend to be the same. So I don't know how you guys can spend so much money.

I know trustees like David Moll get $49,000 for a part-time job, plus a third because he's chair, plus $12,000 tax-free, plus a $30,000 constituency allowance, plus meeting fees. It's all for a part-time job. That's not a bad deal.

I draw comparisons between the cost per student. The separate board is $5,400, the Christian board is around $4,600, and I'm aware of an Armenian school in North York that's around $4,000. When you're talking $8,000 per kid -- Scarborough refused to join your purchasing co-op because it was going to cost an arm and a leg and they had a better deal than you guys did. So all in all, I think you guys don't look after the numbers very well.

Mr Caplan: If I can respond, and there's quite a bit there, first of all the trustee remuneration which you referred to is not uniform across Metro and is not the real issue behind Bill 104. The real issue is what is the impact upon students.

Mr Skidmore: I'm not going to speak to the trustee issue, but Mr Brown, I certainly am prepared to speak to the other two issues briefly, if I might.

The first issue is in terms of the per pupil cost. We're in the process right now of providing analysis for the Ministry of Education on their invitation to provide input into the new allocation model. Quite clearly, we believe we can demonstrate that our per pupil costs are things that have declined dramatically in the last two to three years. Some of the figures that you're quoting are not recent figures.

The second element related to that is the fact that the unique needs of Metro are such that we don't dispute the fact that other boards and other organizations have unique needs related to students. I have spent 20 years in a GTA board, five years in London and two years in Hamilton in various capacities from teacher through to director before coming to Metro. I can say to you unequivocally that the unique needs of Metro are something that does require additional costs. We're working very hard at getting those per pupil costs down. Sir, you're quite accurate in assessing that it is an area we have to address. But clearly, if you look at recent figures, that would be an element we have begun to take on in a very serious fashion.

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): On a point of order, Madam Chair: Mr Brown might want to know that he's talking to the Metropolitan Toronto School Board, of which Scarborough is a part; that this is not the Toronto Board of Education.

The Chair: That's not a point of order.

Mr Jim Brown: If you want to get into a debate that goes past the 90 seconds, I am quite prepared to do that.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Caplan and Mr Skidmore, for coming before us and presenting your brief. We appreciate your being here.

Mr Caplan: Madam Chairman and members of the committee, we appreciate your listening to our presentation and your questions a well.

Mr Skidmore: Madam Chairperson, you should anticipate as a committee that we will be submitting, as a council of directors, a letter indicating that the one request we have as directors is that the guarantees provided in Bill 103 for municipal employees be equally considered under Bill 104. Time doesn't permit today, but we'll provide that to you in writing shortly.

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WILLIAM WALLACE

The Chair: Is William Wallace in the room? Mr Wallace, thank you very much for being here. Welcome. You have 10 minutes to make your presentation to the committee. If time allows, there will be some questions.

Mr William Wallace: Thank you. Shall I start?

Mrs Caplan: No, there's going to be a vote.

The Chair: I think there's going to be a five-minute bell for the vote.

Please, Mr Wallace, you may continue. It appears that the vote has taken place in our absence.

Mrs Caplan: Isn't there supposed to be a bell?

The Chair: There probably was outside. Mr Wallace.

Mr Wallace: My name is William Wallace. I live in the east end of the city of Toronto. I have two children. My son is in grade 2 at Wilkinson Public School, and my daughter will be starting school in the year 2000.

I understand that I won a lottery in the clerk's office today and that's why I am able to address you. I am thankful for that opportunity, but it seems like such a sin that so few members of the public will get a chance to express their views on this foundation-shaking bill. I would ask that you find a way to extend the hearings. The current time-limited schedule is extremely worrisome.

I am deeply troubled by Bill 104. The provincial government has not provided a sufficient context for why this bill is necessary. There are so many unanswered questions that my first response to this bill was one of fear. I fear the loss of real local control of schools. I fear the loss of important programs in our schools such as French immersion, music, heritage languages, art, libraries, sports, guidance, counselling and special education. I fear the loss of staff who in many capacities support our children's learning. I fear a campaign of undermining and devaluing of teachers.

I fear that Bill 104 sets the stage for the privatization of our schools and the erosion of the achievement of our greatest public institutions. I fear the removal of $1 billion from our schools and the impoverishment that will mean. I fear that children with special needs will not receive the help they deserve.

I fear the great downloading of financially volatile social services such as welfare, social housing and elderly care on to municipalities that this bill aids.

I fear the decline in quality of one of the best public education systems in the world. I fear fewer opportunities for my children to take pride and pleasure in their learning. My first response to Bill 104 is fear; my lasting response is deep, deep annoyance.

I'm usually a fairly optimistic person. I can deal with change. I can even deal with the unknown. But when people are making changes and not making clear why they are making them or what the process will be or what their ultimate plans are, I get annoyed. Privatization? Billion-dollar cuts? Dirty, dark, unheated schools? What's your plan? You will pardon me for being suspicious.

This is what I do know: The financial figures the Tory party has been using since before the election about how much waste there is in the system are not useful. When you say you won't cut classroom funding but do not include in that figure heat, light, support staff, principals, librarians, phys ed teachers, music teachers and many other essential parts of our schools, inferring that these elements amount to waste, you are creating the conditions for a bleak educational future.

But you do more. You break a trust with the public about the nature of our schools. It is the government's responsibility to accurately present the facts so that policy directions can be debated in a constructive manner. By twisting the message about the state of school finances, you undermine any future attempt to honestly reform the system, because so much energy is wasted on determining what is a lie and what is the truth.

I know this as well: As with Bill 103, Bill 104 represents an astonishing centralization of power in the hands of provincial and school board bureaucrats and their political masters. Most of these bureaucrats are probably good, hardworking and competent, but too much power can do weird things to people.

Over the years, we have found a very effective means of counterbalancing the power of administrators: school trustees. Education has been so important to our communities that through trustees we have found a means of sharing the power and the responsibility. The relationship between administrators and trustees has developed into a partnership that works. The trustees are able to ensure that the administration remains responsive and accountable to the community. But to be effective, trustees need to have power, resources and the time to ensure the board stays on track, on the one hand, and that children and their families don't fall through the cracks on the other.

I for one am extremely impressed by the quality of representation I get from my local trustee. As a parent and a taxpayer participating in and contributing to our educational system, I would feel a great deal less confident about it if it were not for her full-time representation.

When I read that Metro Toronto is going to be represented by 22 volunteer trustees for pocket money of $5,000, I thought many things. I thought maybe the provincial government was in a folksy kind of mood and had in mind small towns where everyone knows each other and there are a couple of schools. It's kind of charming, and it probably works in small towns to have part-time trustees. But this is not going to work in Toronto. In my ward alone there are four public high schools, at least one school for new Canadians, a bunch of elementary schools and a population of students that is always changing rapidly. At Wilkinson, there is almost as much Gujarati and Chinese spoken at home as English. Who is going to fight for the resources to make this highly diverse community's education work? Someone who is on the ball, knows how to make things happen and can keep on top of the issues to see results happen. There is only one answer: a full-time trustee.

What is this $5,000 cap? Is it vindictive? Is it because in Ontario today only the rich can play? What's with the 22 number? It certainly is not going to lead to effective accountability. It is false populism to label politicians as the problem in our schools. They are an infinitesimal part of the budget. Leave the number of trustees alone. Leave their wages up to the local school board to decide.

Speaking of false populism, you are probably going to suggest to me in your questions that the parent councils will fill the role of trustees. This is patently absurd. First, the school is too small a unit to initiate and sustain effective change across the community. Second, these parent councils will have responsibility without authority. They will be without resources and they will not be able to spend the time on broad policy issues, children and parent support, troubleshooting and so on. Getting parents involved in schools is extremely important, but for goodness' sake set realistic goals for what they can contribute.

Finally, it is astonishing to me that the provincial government is set to launch this multibillion-dollar behemoth on to the populace, this Metro-wide school board. How do you define bloated? How is anybody going to effectively manage something so large? A dictator of a director of education? Certainly not 22 volunteer trustees. Responsive, accountable education demands school boards that are close to the communities they serve. In big cities like Toronto, it means full-time trustees.

You are taking a huge risk with my children's education without doing an adequate assessment of what the benefits are or how they are best achieved. It would be far more prudent to withdraw the legislation now and plan for an orderly reform by the time my daughter starts school.

Mr Martin: Thank you very much. You certainly present this with some valuable perspective and view here this afternoon. I'm also a parent of four kids in the school system in the community where I live, and when I hear the view that somehow we're getting a mediocre product out of the system now and what that says in light of what I know is happening in my own kids' lives and the fact that I realize, as I'm sure you do, that there are always improvements that can be made and change happens, the massive change that is being proposed now in such a short period of time concerns me. How do we get across to the folks across the way that what they're doing will not enhance but will take away from what's already there?

Mr Wallace: I'm not entirely sure how to do that. I think they've heard views like mine. Gentlemen, you can probably let me know that. My sense is that the public school system is extremely effective in the city of Toronto. The reason costs are high is because they are extremely diverse populations. Some of the examples, sir, that you've quoted are very homogenous schools with very specific curriculum goals. In Toronto, those goals are extremely diverse and mixed, simply because of the nature of the population, who is in the schools. That's why it costs more.

Mr Carroll: I have a quick question, Mr Wallace. Based on your presentation, I assume you would agree with me that outcomes of our education system, how well our students perform, is a measure of how effective it is. I'm sure you would agree with that. We don't do very well on the outcomes. On international tests, on national tests, we don't do as well as the country does as an average, we don't do as well as the world does on average. Our students do not perform very well. Against the province of Alberta, which spends almost US$1,000 per student less than we do and scores dramatically higher in tests -- do those outcomes not concern you, sir, what we're getting for the money we're spending as far as student achievement?

Mr Wallace: It depends on how you are measuring. Are they the same kinds of populations measured against the same kinds of populations? I don't think so. I think you're going to find a far more ethnically diverse and language-base-diverse community here. My understanding, according to education experts, is that it takes seven years for new Canadians to master English. I'm sure that's going to have an impact.

Mr Carroll: British Columbia comes in second --

The Chair: Mr Carroll, please let Mr Wallace finish.

Mr Wallace: My understanding from a lot of the international tests is that you're comparing apples and oranges, the élite are being tested in one community. Those are things I've heard. You perhaps know better, but my sense is that the school my son goes to, and I hope my daughter goes to, is an extremely effective school. I am very happy with it. I think it's good value for money.

Mrs Caplan: We just heard from the Metropolitan Toronto School Board, not the Toronto school board, who said that in fact their outcomes are significantly above the average in the country and that is educational outcome. We have a situation here where we're listening to members from the government caucus bash and slam, particularly the city of Toronto. You've been sitting here and listening, and I thought maybe you'd like to take the last 60 seconds and just deliver your message clearly again about what is so special about the community you live in and what you need.

Mr Wallace: I'll give an example. On the first day of my son's senior kindergarten, there was a boy in my son's class who had just arrived in Canada. He spoke no English. He looked terrified coming into that classroom that day. This is an experience in Toronto every single September. There was an educational assistant in that classroom who could take him by the hand or take the class so the teacher could spend special time with that child and make him a part of that classroom and make him feel comfortable in his new class, in his new city, in his new community. If those kinds of resources are not in that classroom, that boy is going to be lost.

It is absolutely wonderful in my school watching children over the course of the year learn and become fluent in English, and they do that because there are people around to help them. Those are the kinds of grass-roots, real examples we're talking about.

Education is hard work. It's people helping people. It's not going to happen by sticking kids in front of computers and having massive classrooms of 40 or 50 kids. It's not going to work. What effective education is about is people, teachers and others, supporting children in learning. You know what? That costs money. I'm prepared to pay the price. I think many Ontarians, and certainly many Torontonians, are willing to do that as well.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Wallace, for being here. On behalf of the committee, I thank you for taking the time.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are recessed until 6:30.

The committee recessed from 1815 to 1835.

DIANE DYSON

The Acting Chair (Mr Richard Patten): Ladies and gentlemen, we will resume our hearings on Bill 104, and I will call Diane Dyson, if she would like to come forward, please.

Ms Diane Dyson: It's my honour to be here today. I am eager to have you all be a part of my daughter's political education. My daughter's understanding of politics for too long has been derived from watching demonstrations and picket signs, so it's a relief to finally show her that there is some debate and discussion that is also necessary within a democracy.

I was called today at lunch and told my name was chosen in a random lottery and that I was being given the chance to address these hearings tonight, so I changed out of my muck-about, motherly clothes, packed my daughter up in the minivan and raced down to tell you what my thoughts are.

But first let me tell you a little bit about myself. I am a single mother of two, a student in university, a home owner and a volunteer at my daughter's school on a regular basis, and also president of the parent-teacher association. Let me tell you what I have learned since I began this educational journey with her.

First off, when I entered into the classrooms and began to do work with the children, I was incredibly impressed with the challenges that teachers are facing these days and most especially how they are handling it. I help teach grade oners their colours and their alphabet, and this impressed me with the need for and the importance of junior kindergarten. I sat in special classes for students who couldn't learn in the classroom, and because of that I don't want to lose special education teachers.

I watched my daughter's classmates slowly emerge from their shell as they learned English, thrown into this new environment where they had to adapt or be lost, and because of this I don't want to lose the English-as-a-second-language teachers.

I watched the educational assistants in her classroom button up innumerable coats and wipe teary faces. Two of them live on my street. I think that's an important part for my daughter to learn, that the people who teach us are the people who are in our community. I don't want to lose our educational assistants.

Even before my daughter was in kindergarten, I met my school trustee over coffee at a neighbour's, and she remembered my name when I met her in the hallways a year later. I must tell you, though, I love my trustee. She answers her own phone, and I can phone her with information or for guidance at any time and know there's no voice mail for her. I don't want to lose her. I think what she is already doing is a full-time job. I don't want to be another number that she has to deal with. I like it that she knows my name.

I don't want to lose music teachers, gym teachers, principals, secretaries or vice-principals. I don't want to lose the custodian. He's an important part of the community. The children walk down the hallways and they say, "Hi, Peter." They know who he is.

I don't even want to lose the downtown bureaucrats. The school boards have always been helpful when I phone, and I phone them with questions about school yard equipment and, "What are the standards of this?" I phone them with questions about drop-off parking zones and I phone them about equity issues. Then I phone Queen's Park, and I've been lost in limbo. I don't want to lose my school board, and I don't want to lose the closeness of that.

I also don't want to lose school community councils, but I don't want them to be running schools. There must be the steadying influence and the expertise that school boards can offer.

The Common Sense Revolution said that classroom funding for education will be guaranteed, so, honourable members, I will hold you to that. The dangers I see are twofold. I'm worried about a change in representation, and this is coming in several disguises. There is the Education Improvement Commission, which worries me, and the fact that it has powers to overturn decisions made by parents earlier on or by trustees. I don't trust them with my daughter's education. It comes in the changes to parent councils, in that we may actually be given more powers than we have now and I don't trust ourselves to govern as widely and not to deteriorate sometimes into the squabbles that we do. And it comes in the changes with fewer trustees, as I've mentioned earlier.

The second danger that this bill puts forward is the change in financing. It would be a grave disservice not to recognize the differences that Toronto deals with, and I know you've heard about this in many of your other presentations, but let's not hurt the classroom, please.

By all of these fears I have been stirred to action. I've taken my children and braved snowstorms to go to local ward meetings to find out what are some of the issues that we have to deal with and we've come down to Queen's Park to hand over the petitions from our schools. I ask you to please consider carefully the rapid changes that are coming forth under this bill.

Mrs Johns: I'd like to thank you for coming today. I appreciate your time and I appreciate the attentiveness of your young one. I also have a five- and a seven-year-old in the school system, so I think we're all very concerned about the future of education in the province.

I went to my board of trustees the other day and spoke to them, and one of the trustees there said that they welcomed the Education Improvement Commission because it allowed taxpayers to ensure, in times when boards were amalgamating, that the dollars and the taxpayers and the students were treated fairly and equitably in the school system. You obviously disagree with that. They felt strongly that there needed to be an accountability there for the people of my region, because my board is merging with another board, if you will. Can you tell me why you don't agree with that?

Ms Dyson: I have some sympathy for the need to create more efficiencies. I am actually the daughter, I'll confess now, of a school board consultant, but in the province of Quebec, so I grew up knowing some of the tales of inefficiencies and I'm not saying there aren't improvements to be made. What scares me is the lack of consultation and the rapidity with which these things are happening. I won't make a bid to say there aren't improvements to be made. I'm just saying I'm scared that, the way we're going about it now, we'll be hurting what's going on in my daughter's classroom.

Mrs Johns: I guess I wasn't so much pinpointing on the issue. The concern is that, for example, when two boards come together they may have different assets or they may have different concerns. One might have debt and one might not, for example, so this commission allows there to be equitable treatment to ensure that money isn't thrown into something beforehand so that it isn't put into the merger. Do you see that as something we should be concerned about?

Ms Dyson: There's a premise to that question, though, that the merging of the boards is necessarily good and therefore we need to find a reasonable way to make sure that happens well. I first would want to debate whether and how the mergers are happening, but the thing that also disturbs me about the Education Improvement Committee is the fact that their decisions are unappealable. That's something that appalled me when I first heard it. Within a democracy, it seems an odd thing to have included in a bill.

Mrs McLeod: I happen to share your concerns, not only about the way in which the amalgamation is being done, without answers to a lot of the questions you've raised, but also in the fact that all the evidence that has ever been brought forward about whether amalgamation works suggests that it doesn't.

One of the studies that I would like to have tabled for the committee is one that was done by a consultant, Steve Lawton, who is often used by the minister and whom we've not always agreed with, but he did a paper on amalgamation and I think you'd be interested, given your presentation, that he says that large boards are more expensive, that amalgamation is expensive in terms of political representation as well as financial costs and that consolidation always increases the distance between citizens and their representatives. I think you've spoken very articulately to the sense of trust that you feel with not only your teacher but your trustee, although I don't know how many trustees would be able to call you by name after a year.

You're obviously a parent who's deeply involved with your children and with their schooling. Your kids would probably be okay if your parent council were running your kids' school. Why do you feel parent councils aren't the route to go then in terms of school management?

Ms Dyson: It's a terrible thing to say, but I'll go on record even to my own executive back home that I think too often we can get caught up in the politics of the moment and therefore run away with certain issues, and that worries me. Also, I'm not sure we always have the expertise to understand the learning processes. We've seen enough fumbles with educators that we know it's not an easy thing to decide how you're going to teach whole language, phonics etc. The debates are extensive, so to turn it over to a group of amateurs -- although we all love our children dearly, we don't necessarily know what's best to prescribe for them when they've got a cough; we do have to check with experts. I would worry that we would lose that expertise if we were to remove school boards.

The Acting Chair: Ms Dyson, time has run over. I want to thank you and your daughter very much for coming.

Mr Martin: Don't I get a chance to ask a question?

The Chair: It was my misunderstanding at the beginning, but I'll give you first --

Mr Skarica: On a point of order, Mr Chairman: I ask for unanimous consent to extend this presentation by two minutes to give everybody equal time.

The Chair: Tony, if you want to do that?

Mr Martin: I appreciate that because I really did want to say to you very briefly that I appreciated the stories you told. That often says it better than anything else. I remember my eldest daughter's first day of school. I'll never forget it, the kindergarten teacher coming out and actually meeting us and being so excited about Moira arriving at school. Because of that, we felt good. We felt that she was going to be cared for the way we have cared for her.

The basis upon which all this change is being made is that somehow the system is producing a mediocre product. Has that been your experience?

Ms Dyson: No, not at all. In fact, that's what's been so startling for me, to go into the classrooms and find out what good work is being done. That's all I can say.

One of the snowstorms that we braved our way through was just recently, and we obtained signatures from parents talking about their concerns. I'll just leave that in your log, or however you do that.

The Acting Chair: Can we see it? Very good.

Ms Dyson: These are signatures of parents --

The Acting Chair: We will accept that on behalf of the committee.

Mr Skarica: Mr Chair, perhaps I could table at this time the reports that Ms McLeod was referring to that she has requested. I don't know if there are enough copies for everyone.

The Acting Chair: I'll give them to the clerk and she can --

Mrs McLeod: May I also, Mr Chairman, express my appreciation for those two reports being tabled and also ask that the committee have tabled the paper by Stephen Lawton of OISE that was done on May 18, 1995, and revised June 7, 1995, on school board amalgamation.

The Acting Chair: All right, we'll record that.

BARRY LIPTON

The Acting Chair: Will Mr Barry Lipton please come forward. Mr Lipton, I guess you know the procedure. You have 10 minutes.

Mr Barry Lipton: My name is Barry Lipton and I am a heavy-construction worker living in Toronto.

I am angry at the fact that this committee is excluding hundreds of citizens from presenting their views on this legislation to this committee. I was given 27 hours' notice to appear before you. This represents both an arrogant attitude towards people and the obscene haste with which this government is ramming these bills through.

I want to address this committee because I feel this bill will do irreparable harm to our children and, in turn, to Ontario. The true name of this bill should be the Less Democracy in Education Act. Its true purpose is to disembowel local control of the education system and to steal $1 billion from students and teachers.

It is An Act to worsen the accountability, effectiveness and quality of Ontario's school system by reducing the number of democratically elected school trustees, establishing an Education Deterioration Commission to oversee the mutation of the new system, providing for certain matters related to citizen disfranchisement in 1997 and making other degenerations to the Education Act and the Municipal Elections Act.

1850

The Harrisites in recent days have been trying to say that all the different parts of the mega-week announcements are separate and are not connected to one another. This is not true. There is a larger agenda at work here that has nothing to do with improving education or municipal services. It is an agenda that is driven by Tom Long and the right-wing Republican ideologues in positions of influence in the Harrisite government.

Today the Minister of Education said the building of new schools can go ahead without any problems. I suggest that he should read the legislation. Section 341(1) says, "From January 13, 1997 to December 31, 1997, an existing board shall not" -- and I'll skip down to subsection (e) -- "enter into a contract or incur a financial liability or obligation that extends beyond December 31, 1997."

The arrogance and anti-democratic nature of this government has been slapped down by the courts today. The illegal appointment of their trustees in Bill 103 is just a mirror of the appointment of the two co-chairs of the Education Deterioration Commission.

If the government thinks the citizens will not fight this legislation in the courts and win, you are sadly mistaken. Everything this government does is slipshod and arrogant. These two traits make it very easy for an educated and politicized citizenry to take on this government and win.

Several reasons that I oppose this bill are:

This bill establishes new district school boards and a transition process without any provision for a new role for the boards in relation to management of schools, financial decision-making and other issues.

The principle of representation by population on school boards, which is currently enshrined in the legislation, is now relegated to regulation.

With no apparent rationale, spouses of school board employees are prohibited from running for office at any board, yet an employee of a supplier of services to a school is allowed to run -- the trustee from McDonald's, the trustee from Laidlaw.

It would appear that the EIC is empowered to compel boards to contract out non-instructional services, destroying unionized jobs and putting many different people in contact with small children.

Also, buried among the EIC's responsibilities is the Harris government's hidden agenda, the establishment of charter schools, disguised as "increasing parental involvement in education governance"; two-tiered education, and two-tiered employment from a two-faced government.

Where there is not enough money for charter schools, there will be a decline in the quality of parental input. Parents will only be involved in the school council when their own children are in school. When their children graduate, so will the parents. The institutional memory will decline, and in the process much more energy will be spent trying to do things that were done before but forgotten. Not all children's needs will be met by parent councils. Children with disabilities and children from minority groups will not have their needs fully represented by parent councils. As a person without children, my concerns for the education system will be lost.

In closing, I want to address the opposition because I know they are hearing what is said. This government confuses the fact that it has a majority government with the reality of a polarized citizenry that increasingly does not recognize the Harrisites as a legitimate government.

The Harrisites have pandered to that segment of the population that hates politicians. You are democratic representatives and when this government portrays democratic representatives as self-serving politicians, they are attacking democracy itself. They refuse to realize that in order to govern you have to have the consent of the governed. We are entering into a polarized period in Ontario where more and more people are rejecting the legitimacy of this government. This is not only a problem for the Harrisites now, but it is a long-term problem for all government.

The destruction of belief in the premise of democratically elected governments representing and being responsive to citizenry leads to anarchy and civil decay. I am sure that when the citizenry starts to feel all the hospital closings, the decay of education that Bill 104 is bringing about, the privatization of sewer and water, and the destruction of Ontario's civil society, the anger will only rise. I am sure the government members will be told in their ridings that what they are doing is wrong. If they live in small communities in Ontario they will not be able to hide from the anger around them.

In Grey-Bruce, the district health board has been threatened with death. Why? This government insists on violent change in our society. Over 4,000 letters of protest were sent to the health board this past week. They need to call police to protect the board when they have a meeting. This is not in Toronto but in Owen Sound.

I hope the opposition parties start to speak out against the destruction of civil society by the Harrisites and to offer people an alternative to violent confrontation when they try to speak to their government.

Mrs McLeod: I appreciate the fact that you've not only presented us with a brief but updated it with events that have happened as recently as this afternoon. Because of the decision by the courts on Bill 103 today, I'm feeling particularly aware of the undemocratic nature of legislation which retroactively suspends rights of elected bodies, whether they are municipal councils or school boards. That is an issue we've raised today, that Bill 104, which has appointed co-chairs of the education and information -- the EIC; I keep wanting to give it different names than the minister has given it -- even though nominally they're consultants to the government. That they're already working and the powers of boards are already suspended, to me is the same kind of anti-democratic action as the courts found inappropriate and illegal in 103. So I'm hoping either the Speaker or the minister will recognize that fact.

I gather, just as a question, that you have not great confidence that the government is going to be able to address in its funding formula the needs of those children with disabilities or those with minority needs?

Mr Lipton: I think that the special programs that are available to children now will be part of the loss in our education system, that as money is taken out of the system those are the things that will be lost. I know people with children with disabilities here in Toronto who have good rapport with their schools.

Mr Martin: I take it that like the rest of us around the table, you have no difficulty with change and evolution and things being made better. From your presentation, my sense is also that it's the speed and the way this change is happening presently. You, as Ms McLeod suggested, referenced the court judgment today. We also had a judgment by our own Speaker in the House of the contempt of the Legislature that he found was present when certain decisions were made by the government.

Mr Jim Flaherty (Durham Centre): That's wrong.

Mr Martin: They get very defensive when you actually --

Mr Flaherty: No, it's just wrong. That's wrong. It's not defensive.

Mr Martin: -- poke them in that sore spot that is obviously bothering them.

The Acting Chair: Tony, you have to be quick. We're over time already.

Mr Martin: With respect to all of that, what process would you suggest we follow in this instance or in further instances as the government runs out its mandate?

Mr Lipton: I've put a lot of thought into the processes that are going on in this province and I think if this government wants to salvage something -- and I'm really concerned about the kind of anger that's about in our province -- if it really wants to involve people, it should take a close look at the process that was followed in South Africa with a constituent assembly in bringing together all the disparate parties in that country to form a constitution. That can apply to the education bill as well as the amalgamation bills. I think that is the only way to bring back this province from what I think is going to be a terrible future.

Mr Skarica: We've had some witnesses, such as yourself, saying that this bill will do irreparable harm; we've had other witnesses saying that we haven't gone far enough and there's a bloated bureaucracy that can't be dented. You say you're not opposed to change. How would you propose to improve the education system?

Mr Lipton: I started to say that I think it has to be done in consultation with those people who are involved. You have to really listen to them, not a two-week hearing process and then just go ahead and do what you want anyway. There has to be consensus among the parties. Unless that happens, I think you're going to run into major trouble in this province as a government.

The Acting Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Lipton. The time has gone over. We appreciate your presentation.

1900

CARLOS TORCHIA

The Acting Chair: I call Mr Carlos Torchia. Welcome, Mr Torchia.

Mr Carlos Torchia: I would like to introduce my daughter, Bianca. She attends Palmerston public school, in the French immersion track. My name is Carlos Torchia. I am a parent of two children at Palmerston public school, and I also represent the Spanish-speaking parents at the Toronto school board.

I have learned that under the new conditions set by Bill 104 the schools that the Toronto school board is presently composed of will see their annual budget reduced by between 25% and 40%. Thus, special programs and services tailored by the Toronto school board to serve the necessities of the multi-ethnic student population are threatened with disappearance. Programs such as reading clinics, buses for French immersion, lunch supervision, music, international languages, ESL, swimming lessons, adult education programs and services such as counselling, teacher-librarians and social workers will be drastically reduced or will be cut entirely.

Of course these losses will affect the student population as a whole, but on the other hand we know that the children of our community are frequent users of these programs. There is no mystery as to why this is the case. Many of the Spanish-speaking children are from families that have arrived in Canada during the last 20 years, escaping repression, civil wars and hunger in Central and South America. Many of them have difficulties in adjusting to the new life and to the new educational environment. Many of them show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. Therefore, many of them require special treatment within the school structure, and, I insist, until now the Toronto school board has responded to these demands, providing an ample spectrum of programs and services.

Moreover, research released by the Toronto school board concludes that the so-called Latino children present low levels of academic achievement and high dropout risk even before completing their secondary education. Of course, these finding cannot be explained through the bell curve but rather because of the situations these children have been exposed to in their original countries.

As parents, we are vitally interested in assuring that the insertion of our children into this new society will occur in the least painful way possible. Until now we have had a great partner in this struggle: the Toronto school board.

When the Minister of Education announced that the school boards will no longer be entitled to collect the education portion of property taxes, anguish invaded us. How will these special programs be financed? Can Mr Snobelen guarantee that the provincial government will pick up the slack? We are worried because Bill 104 states that the provincial government will centrally administrate the financial resources. We know that we are confronted with a government that is eager to cut public expenditures, a government that has a narrow concept of the classroom, reducing it to the ratio of 35 students to one teacher.

I am also concerned about the prospect of losing the provincial grant that finances international language programs. It has been well documented that students' self-esteem depends on preservation of their mother tongue and serves as a bridge in the acquisition of the English language. One of the greatest conquests of our community has been the teaching of Spanish in elementary schools either during the day or in an after 4 program. Many other students benefited from this educational option. Spanish is not only a heritage language but is also a strategic language in the global village for international trade relations. We demand that the minister commits to finance the international languages program.

A third aspect of Bill 104 that causes concern in the Spanish community is its authoritarian style. Without sufficiently consulting parents, the provincial government is trying to pass a bill that deeply restructures the relationship between parents and their boards of education, between parents and their democratically elected trustees. They help us make the school system work for our children and ourselves. If the number of trustees is greatly reduced, as Bill 104 proposes, the likelihood of being able to reach our trustees with problems and concerns will be minimal. Accountability for us, up until now, has been a daily exercise. If Bill 104 is approved, trustees will be distant representatives immersed in a gigantic territory and earning a ludicrous salary of $5,000 a year. Who will lose? Parents and children.

Bill 104 requires that school councils will be established in all schools. I know little about this, because Bill 104 is not clear about how its members will be chosen or which tasks it will have to carry out. Will these school councils concentrate the delicate duties of trustees, dealing with the technicalities of the financial aspect of education? Are parents prepared to assume this task? If this is the case, will parents carry out this task on a voluntary basis? What kind of parents will have the time to participate in such school councils? Working parents? Single mothers? I doubt it. Rather, only an élite group of parents will be able to participate, in my opinion.

Another authoritarian feature around Bill 104 is that the provincial government will create a new organism to oversee education, the so-called Education Improvement Commission. Instead of perfecting the existing democratic process in education, the provincial government wants to break the relationship between common citizens and their elected representatives, putting above the elected school boards an autocratic body that distorts, undermines, controls and perverts the transparent essence of local democracy. This is a threat that will have consequences for democracy as a whole. What will happen if tomorrow some groups have the idea to establish a body to oversee and control the Parliament?

I am not afraid of changes. I am afraid of authoritarianism. In a democratic society, everybody can propose changes. Changes to the educational system are not evil in themselves; what is evil is the way these changes are being imposed by the provincial government, without establishing a deep and authentic process of consultation with parents and teachers, without first making the necessary impact analysis. When a major restructuring of social life is being proposed, nothing is wrong about it except that I want to have a say in it through a consultation process, which the government has the duty to lead and guarantee.

1910

I am afraid that the reduction of local democracy in education is a tool to cut the centralized budget further. I fear that parents distanced from trustees and boards will not be able to stop a big crisis in education, a crisis that unavoidably will lead to the privatization of the schools.

I have been living in this city for years, but originally I came from Chile. There, Pinochet's regime privatized a national school system that had produced a population of highly educated individuals and two Nobel Prizes in Literature. In Chile a system with municipal schools was established and subsidized by the government. There, poor municipalities could not supplement the government's subsidy, and rich municipalities with high-income taxpayers were able to substantially supplement the subsidy. Also, the reform allowed for the installation of private schools that received subsidy from the state. It was and is a good business in Chile to install a private school. All you need is a big house, desks and a few teachers, who previously were deprived by the dictatorship of a decent salary and unions.

Since democracy returned in Chile, and until now, it has been impossible to restore public dominion over education. In today's Chile if your want your children to go to university to study for a good career, you have to enroll them in an expensive private school. The highest marks in the national test at the end of secondary school, which determines entrance to university, do not come from the former democratic, equitable public schools; rather, students with higher marks now come from prestigious and expensive private schools. I do not want the schools in Ontario to suffer the same fate. For all these reasons, I oppose Bill 104.

The Acting Chair: Mr Torchia, the time went over 10 minutes, so I want to thank you and your daughter, Bianca, for coming and expressing your views.

Tony, you'll lead off the next one. We ran out of time on that one.

DIANA WEATHERALL

The Acting Chair: Can I call forward Anna Ledo. Welcome. You probably noticed that you have 10 minutes. If there is time remaining at the completion of your presentation, we'll begin with Mr Martin. Thank you for coming.

Mrs Diana Weatherall: I'm afraid I'm not Anna, because today is the day that Alexander Muir/Gladstone Avenue Public School has its parents' meeting, and we didn't have enough notice to be able to change it. I am Diana Weatherall. I have been asked to represent the parents' association of Alexander Muir/Gladstone Avenue Public School. We are here because of our deep fear about what we believe the legislation will do to our school.

Alexander Muir/Gladstone is located on Gladstone Avenue in the Dufferin and Dundas area of downtown Toronto. The school goes from junior kindergarten to grade 8. There are presently 451 students, 75% of whom do not speak English as their first language. As a 1B inner-city school, the poverty level is higher than at most schools in Ontario, yet Alexander Muir/Gladstone is a school that works. Visitors come from across North America and Europe to study its methodology. It was highlighted in last year's royal commission report For the Love of Learning, where it was included as a description of a successful school.

This was not always the case. The school that my Chinese children attended in the 1980s, this same school, was very different from the one my grandchildren are now attending.

When nine years ago it became clear that Alexander Muir/Gladstone was not working, when the Portuguese community made the trustees and school officials aware of their concerns about their children ending up in non-academic schools, the board was able to respond. Alexander Muir/Gladstone become ESL, an English-as-a-second-language project. Research from the project has shown the achievements of the students and the fact that the students are now continuing to achieve secondary and post-secondary schooling.

Our fear is that with appointed officials who are far removed from local situations, situations which are not clearly understood, the kind of responses which resulted in our success will be almost impossible to achieve. This success has been achieved in part because we have put two important ideas about language learning in place: (1) that students need to be able to use the school to help them make a better transition to English; and (2) that while students with another first language may learn to speak English quickly, they need five to seven years of additional support to achieve the reading and writing skills of a native speaker.

At Alexander Muir/Gladstone you will see ESL students speaking, reading or writing in Portuguese, Somali, Chinese or Vietnamese with a buddy. Adult ESL teachers, bilingual co-op students and international language teachers help the students in class, first to read and write in their language, and then when they understand the subject, translate the work into English for them. This is not help in the form of expensive technology but it is help that works. The proposed 25% cut in funding next year to the school board could mean the demise of the program.

The program is so much better than returning to what I went through when my five Chinese-speaking girls came in 1980. The eldest was placed in grade 8. I can remember blacking the bottom of a plate with a candle in the hope of explaining the word "combustion" to her and then puffing out the candle to illustrate respiration, of course to her total confusion. If the school had had someone who could explain Chinese so that she could understand what the words meant, perhaps she would have been able to complete school, a fact that is causing her problems today.

One of the greatest concerns of the parent association is that these programs will be curtailed or cut. Their greatest wish is for their children to have an educational future that many of them did not have. They are depending on the school to give their children the skills that will enable them to graduate from high school, to enter college or university and then join the workforce at a level that will make them productive members of society and not a drain on society.

Alexander Muir/Gladstone parents have a very deep understanding of the importance of English as a second language. It would be disastrous to the community to have any cuts in these programs. This is the reason that we are so concerned about the transfer of all responsibility to the Ministry of Education, and the 25% cut in funding that the school board has told us to expect. Even if the cuts were 20%, we have looked and looked at the funds necessary to run the school and we see that we will be loosing teachers, as many as four, and at least two teaching assistants, to say nothing of clerical, maintenance cuts and then major cuts to our international language programs.

1920

I would like to circulate to you a list of items that the school would have to do without or seriously diminish if the board has to implement the 25% cut in funding. The reading clinic would likely have to come to an end. This would probably mean a return to having ESL students streamed into the more expensive small special education classes, as they used to be.

For our pilot ESL project, the board provided a project teacher and one project officer. This has been phased out over a three-year period so that staff could plan and share the same philosophy in their classrooms. Due to a joint effort between the school and York University, all the teachers have become proficient in ESL. The staff are still innovative and few transfer out. At present, the staff are beginning to question why they are there, but the children still remain excited about learning. We do not know at what point the staff will become demoralised and lose their enthusiasm as the cuts loom and frighten everyone.

We do not see ESL students as having problems to be fixed. They have knowledge, skills and experiences, and with a supportive rich language environment, they do learn English and bring much to the English speakers who are their classmates. Any curtailment of our ability to help these children while they are young will cost society dearly. It is at the beginning of the learning curve that students can be helped, not at the end when they have given up and when the only course open to them is to let society or the government look after them, either on welfare or in jail.

The help that Alexander Muir/Gladstone has provided is not in the form of expensive technology. The English-as-a-second-language innovations that have taken place in our school are innovations which the experts say will be needed in five years in a majority of Toronto schools that will have similar populations. That the school have the wherewithal to continue this program is our major concern. Please do not feel that we don't value the many other programs such as performance arts, physical education, art, selected field trips, they are important, but we just feel that it's vitally important that our children are able to grow to their fullest potential, and we feel very strongly that the English-as-a-second-language program is the way for our children to achieve.

The Acting Chair: Mrs Weatherall, your time is up. Thank you very much for coming.

ELEANOR DUDAR

The Acting Chair: We call Eleanor Dudar. Welcome to the hearings.

Ms Eleanor Dudar: My name is Eleanor Dudar. I'm a parent of two children aged 18 and 15. My 18-year-old is at university; my 15-year-old attends Oakwood Collegiate in the city of Toronto. I have also, for the past three years, served as the Toronto board's environmental education officer. I have all sorts of other credentials, as your briefing notes on me may make clear, but these are the two pertinent ones in this context. Indeed, my remarks tonight come largely out of my experience as a parent active in my children's schools over the past 13 years.

The Toronto board is the envy of every parent activist I have ever met anywhere in this country, not because the board necessarily does parents' bidding -- sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't -- but because the habit of parent involvement is deeply embedded in the culture of our board. "How will parents be represented on this committee?" is one of the first questions asked when any group is being formed to deal with matters of substance.

Do the members of this committee know that about the Toronto board? Do you know what that means to the way policy gets shaped and decisions get made at our board? Do you understand that meaningful parent involvement becomes possible only when you have a very active board of trustees, themselves fully accountable to the people? Parent involvement is part of a web of democratic relations in a school community that begins with having locally elected, locally accountable representatives. If you remove these salaried employees and replace them with volunteer trustees paid an honorarium of up to $5,000, the trustees won't thrive and neither will parent involvement. There will be no legitimate basis for local democracy.

Toronto parents have a lot to lose with the passage of Bill 104. You are threatening to destroy a system that we as parents have helped to create over many years. And no, local parent councils are not the answer, nor can they take the place of trustees, but I have no time to develop that argument here. As an aside, what use do you think you would be if Ottawa were to declare that you should receive a stipend of $5000 a year for your work as MPPs?

I have been told that the government members of this committee aren't really interested in what deputants have to say. I must proceed as if you are, and on that basis ask you to take a long second look at the bill. After all, you have to look at yourselves in the mirror every morning just like the rest of us, however much you are being conditioned to shut out the voices of reason.

Apart from the really reprehensible robbing of the education system and our children's future to fund the 30% tax cut, the other big issue central to your government's concept of education reform is the destruction of local democracy. I want to talk about that, speak briefly about the role of policy, then close with a suggestion as to how you as government committee members might proceed.

Why the need for a long second look at this bill? I shall limit myself to touching on two points.

My first point: Bill 104 deals a death blow to local democracy in education governance.

First, it is bad enough that the trustees for the 300,000 students of the proposed mega-board would number 22 rather than the current 88 members of the six boards. Even if the 22 remaining were full-time, the system would be much less responsive to the needs and aspirations of the people it serves. This provision makes a mockery of effective representative government.

Second, and worse still, these remaining 22 people will not be full-time trustees. I would ask the committee, what work on my behalf are you telling them to give up now that they will be volunteer trustees needing to work 40 hours somewhere else before attending to board of education matters? This provision makes a mockery of local political control of boards of education.

Third, and worst of all, are the sweeping powers the bill gives to the Education Improvement Commission, which is given what amounts to absolute powers over the governance of public education in Ontario until December 31, 2000. Nor is there any recourse should citizens of the province find the decisions of the commission and its committees arbitrary, unjust or just plain destructive. Its decisions, as you know, "are final and shall not be reviewed or questioned by a court." This provision makes a mockery of the rule of law.

Democratic practice is the anchor of citizenship in Canada. An active understanding of responsible citizenship is one of the main goals we hope our children will achieve by the time they leave high school. Democracy needs to be modelled throughout the education system.

One scenario haunts me above all as I contemplate the meaning of this bill. The scenario of what our schools with substantially reduced staffs will be like for our young people is a very worrying one, but this is not the scenario I speak of. Rather, it is a scenario of something that has already happened that I find so chilling.

1930

From the first time I laid unbelieving eyes on Bills 103 and 104, I have been haunted by a picture of people in rooms, drafting bits of this legislation, passing them back and forth for vetting, making them proof against any appeal, and setting up the transition team and the Education Improvement Commission with their sweeping powers above the law. "Have you made sure there is no possibility of amending or softening or challenging our intent with these bills?" must have been the question asked over and over again until you had closed all the loopholes.

Hence, no judicial review, no protection of the Statutory Powers Procedure Act. If this legislation isn't going to destroy something very precious, why does the Education Improvement Commission need to be protected from proceedings for damages? The discussions, as legal advisers helped close all the avenues of decent redress we have come to take for granted, must have been very nasty, and very demeaning of you and of all of us.

Imagine a government so certain of the rightness of its position that it would dare to eliminate all possible checks and balances. While I am appalled at the planned grab of up to $1 billion from the education system to fund the proposed 30% tax cut, my rage is saved for the utter contempt which this government has shown to the people of Ontario and to our democratic system.

My second point: Bill 104 makes no provision for policy integration. I can't help but wonder, when your government offers us in the proposed megacity 22 volunteer trustees paid an honorarium of up $5,000 a year, what you know about the work of trustees. The more visible part, constituency work, can be guessed at, because it is something you yourselves, as elected members of the legislature, do. The less visible but equally valuable part is budget-setting and policy-making, and these activities don't happen in a vacuum.

Good policy depends on consultation among all the partners: teachers, parents, other board staff, community members and trustees. But the driving force in policy-making at our board is the trustees, through whom the public works to exercise its will and give direction to central administration. This is local democracy at work. Volunteer part-time trustees will not have the time or the knowledge to work in effective partnership with parents, teachers and senior administration in a board with such heterogeneous need as ours.

Good policy is critical to building and maintaining a healthy education system. It articulates the vision and provides the framework of governance. It takes time and careful thinking, and includes, but is more than, just common sense. If I had more time, I would tell you how the Toronto board's environmental policy and its accompanying greening schools program was developed by a changing partnership of teachers, parents, board staff and trustees. It takes all those parties, and time, to make effective policy that everyone can live by.

But nowhere does Bill 104 mention the policies of the many boards about to be merged. Imagine a bill on school board amalgamation saying nothing about the policy legislation that governs the practices of each board. I couldn't understand such a glaring omission until I realized that thoughtful policy-setting is anathema to a government that boasts that all you need to run the province of Ontario is common sense. You are following what you believe to be a recipe for success in the global economy, and you seem to believe you can proceed on automatic pilot. I suppose you don't really need policies of substance when you've got "truth" on your side. None the less, it's my hope that the hearings on Bills 103 and 104 have helped you to see that you don't have the whole truth and realize that you must pay attention to the real needs and interests of real people and of a system that isn't broken.

Finally, how to proceed with this bill? First, you need to summon up a couple of simple but quite rare qualities, qualities that none the less we all have: courage and humility -- courage to admit the very deep flaws in the bill as proposed and humility to learn from the many submissions you have heard about ways to go about education reform that make sense.

The greatest act of courage and humility would be to recommend that the bill be withdrawn for further study. If you can't manage that, then a fallback position would be a thorough revision of the bill that removes the most glaringly, insultingly undemocratic features: restore judicial review; ensure that the body overseeing the transition is drawn from locally elected boards and not one appointed by the minister; and restore the possibility of a living wage for the full-time job that being a trustee needs to be, certainly in Toronto, the board I know best. Review very carefully the drastic cut in the number of trustees.

What this bill doesn't represent is common sense. Common sense, after all, doesn't actually preclude careful, deliberative thinking. Rather, Bill 104, like Bill 103, represents common contempt: contempt for democracy, contempt for people's needs, contempt for real common sense.

As I sit here tonight, I can't rid myself of the vision of people drafting this bill, and perhaps even gloating over how people-proof you have made it. Luckily, you still have time to make changes. If you don't, your contemptuous approach to politics and to the people you were elected to serve will come back to haunt you.

The Acting Chair: Thank you, Ms Dudar.

ALANNA MCDONAGH

The Acting Chair: I now call upon Alanna McDonagh.

Ms Alanna McDonagh: I am grateful to have this opportunity to speak with you today, particularly as I am aware that many hundreds of other parents, every bit as frightened and angry about what the government proposes to do to our schools as I am, have been denied this opportunity.

This button I'm wearing today says, "Don't cut the heart out of education." Now that's a pretty violent image, to cut the heart out of something, but I don't think it overstates the reality of what's going on here. With Bill 104, the current Minister of Education has launched a devastating attack on our public education system and, as a result, on the quality of our children's lives.

Since children spend nearly half of their waking hours at school, what is under attack here is not only their education, but also the very quality of their formative years, of their childhood. It should come as no surprise then that the majority of us who have appeared before this committee are mothers of children in the public education system. It should come as no surprise because, to paraphrase the old saying, "Hell hath no fury like a mother whose children are under attack."

Very early on in Mr Snobelen's tenure as Minister of Education, he was captured on videotape advocating inventing a crisis in Ontario's education system; an unusual aim for a Minister of Education, but then this was no ordinary Minister of Education. Mr Snobelen has delivered on that promise and our schools must now struggle to teach our children under a cloud of menace and confusion. With the introduction of Bill 104, Mr Snobelen takes his create-a-crisis plan one giant step further.

I would like you to ask yourself, what, or should I say whose, purpose does it serve to create a state of crisis in our children's schools? It certainly doesn't serve the children; on the contrary, it does them a very great disservice. It doesn't serve the teachers. It doesn't serve the parents. It doesn't serve the electorate. Who stands to gain from Mr Snobelen's invent-a-crisis plan? Who stands to gain if he is successful in destroying public education in Ontario?

Let me share with you something I've recently learned about Ernst and Young, the private sector consultants whose report, Analysis of School Board Spending, Mr Snobelen uses to justify much of what's in Bill 104. Ernst and Young has produced a manual outlining its ambitious plans for world-wide privatization of publicly run institutions, a manual which includes the following statement: "State-owned enterprises have consistently proven to be among the most sought-after buys of the past decade."

Is this the fate that awaits our children's schools? Are they to be seen as sought-after buys, sources of profit for businessmen, rather than as institutions of learning, as educational environments designed to foster the healthy development of our children's minds and spirits? Will our children's schools be put up for sale to the highest bidder? There will certainly be no way to stop this from happening if Bill 104 passes into law, because whatever the Education Improvement Commission wants, the Education Improvement Commission gets, and no one, not even a court of law, has a thing to say about it. This is democracy?

To further support my perception that this government would dearly love to privatize education in Ontario, let me share with you a conversation I had a few months ago with Mr Terence Young, parliamentary assistant to John Snobelen. It took place at Howard school in the west end of Toronto. I, along with other members of the ward 2 parents' council, had organized a meeting to help parents understand and respond to the ministry's high school reform proposals. Although he was specifically asked not to, Mr Young co-opted half an hour of our two-hour meeting to sell the Crombie commission's proposals on changes to education funding.

Our meeting, as seems increasingly commonplace whenever members of this government are brought face to face with the public, degenerated into fury, confusion and frustration. After it was over, I confronted Mr Young. I asked him if his government was or was not going to take $1 billion out of the education system, as Mr Snobelen had been hinting in the press at the time. "You'll see," was the only response I could get out of him.

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Finally, at a loss as to what else to say to Mr Young, I said simply, "I think your government is evil." He looked taken aback for a moment. Then it was his turn to surprise me when he replied, "Well, I think Communism is evil." I was, as you may imagine, bewildered, finding this to be a complete non sequitur. I asked Mr Young to explain himself, but once again he flatly refused to answer my question. Later on, however, the penny dropped. What Terence Young, parliamentary assistant to John Snobelen, Minister of Education, meant, I now believe, was that public institutions such as public education, are communistic, and therefore "evil." In an instant, Mr Young revealed his true colours and the underlying agenda of his government.

The government introduces this Bill as An Act to improve the accountability, effectiveness and quality of Ontario's school system. First of all, there is nothing in Bill 104 which improves the accountability of our school system. In fact, the precise opposite is true. By reducing the number of democratically elected representatives, by reducing the number of community school boards, by mandating that voluntary parent councils which are accountable to no one be given greater decision-making powers and responsibilities, by making it possible to outsource support staff positions, and most of all, by appointing and granting extraordinary powers to the fallaciously named Education Improvement Commission, the current Minister of Education has with Bill 104 all but wiped out the accountability in the system, at least as far as accountability to the electorate is concerned. The Education Improvement Commission, an appointed body which has been given absolute power over everyone else in the system, is accountable only to the Minister of Education.

There appears to be nothing in Bill 104 which even addresses the quality of Ontario's school system. Nevertheless, it will inevitably have a negative impact on the quality of education in this province because it removes effective control of education from educators and puts it in the hands of a Minister of Education who isn't even educated, let alone an educator. I can tell you I do not sleep better at night knowing that a man schooled in horses and garbage may be making critical decisions about my daughter's education.

I know you will say that school boards will still be mandated to make the educational decisions, but having been stripped of the power and resources to implement any initiatives other than those rubber-stamped by the Education Improvement Commission, how much weight will their decisions carry? The minister is fond of blaming school boards now when they're forced to eliminate programs or increase class sizes to cope with his funding cuts. It's very convenient for him to have them to blame, and guess what? He'll still have them to blame, but now with even less capacity to fend off his attacks on public education.

I object as well to the fact that with this bill local communities lose control over both the funding and the governance of education. What do we get from the party which promised us smaller government? School boards the size of France, school boards with populations greater than all of the maritime provinces combined. Is this what Mike Harris meant by smaller government? Huge governments at great distances from the communities they serve, extreme centralization of power -- this sounds more and more like a totalitarian state and less and less like Canada.

Children belong to the community in which they live and that community is in the best position to know what its children need. Distant provincial bureaucrats and overworked, underpaid trustees with responsibility for hundreds of thousands of children scattered over vast geographical areas cannot possibly be in touch with the real and specific needs of our children, and so these real and specific needs are likely to go unmet.

The mandating of parent councils is a very peculiar and utterly unworkable idea. How do you mandate volunteers? Is that like workfare for parents? This idea is also a virtual recipe for the takeover of special interest groups at the local school level, special interest groups, I remind you, that are accountable to no one. Equity will become but a fond memory as affluent parents can afford to give time and money which less affluent parents cannot. I don't know a single parent who likes this part of the bill. We don't want more responsibility than we already have, we don't want to work for nothing and we as parents do not have the expertise or the experience to perform important functions which require both.

I want to say a word or two about the minister's plans to facilitate the outsourcing of our support staff positions. The support staff in our schools spend many hours every day in pretty close quarters with our children. We want to know who they are. We don't want them to be changing every few months, so that children become accustomed to seeing strangers in their schools and can no longer easily know who should and who should not be walking the halls. The provision for privatizing our support staff will increase staff turnover and decrease their accountability to the school community. Their employers will be private sector companies whose bottom line is profit, not the wellbeing of children. This will, I believe, inevitably lead to situations which compromise the safety of our children. Surely nothing which does this can be allowed. Why on earth is it even being considered?

There are other aspects of Bill 104 which I don't like, but my time must be running out. I only hope that time is not running out for the excellent public education system we have now in Ontario, a system which Mr Harris was happy enough to brag about to foreign investors last year but which his own education minister seems nevertheless determined to mutilate with drastic reforms. Will somebody please tell Mr Snobelen it makes no sense to perform radical surgery on a healthy patient, so please, put away the knife.

Thank you for listening, and please, for the sake of all our children, yours as well as mine, throw Bill 104 on the scrap heap, where it belongs. Don't cut the heart out of education.

The Acting Chair: Ms McDonagh, thank you very much for coming.

PAUL GOULET

The Acting Chair: I'd like to call Paul Goulet, please. Mr Goulet, you know you have 10 minutes?

Mr Paul Goulet: Yes, sir, I realize that.

The Acting Chair: If there's any time left, we share the time between the three parties to pose questions to you.

Mr Goulet: I'll do my best, sir.

The Acting Chair: By the way, if you do run close to the 10-minute mark, I'll give you a minute's notice.

Mr Goulet: My name is Paul Goulet, and I am a Canadian citizen who is a long-time resident of the city of Toronto, for the last decade as a homeowner in the Annex neighbourhood. My wife and I are blessed with three daughters, one of whom has attended Toronto schools and then graduated from Ryerson, and two younger daughters currently doing well just a few blocks from here at Huron Street Public School. Until recently, I served as co-chair of the Huron school PGA and I have the continued honour to serve as chair of the Mid-Town Parents Council, the consultative association of parent organizations at Toronto Board of Education schools in wards 13 and 14.

Accompanying me this evening are some of my Mid-Town Council colleagues: Marcia Nemoy, whose two children attend Hillcrest Public School in ward 13 and whose balanced thoughts about educational issues were recently featured in Maclean's magazine, and Beverley Manchee, a concerned parent whose two children attend Cottingham Public School in ward 14. Both my colleagues also serve as Mid-Town delegates to the parent involvement committee of the Toronto Board of Education.

Although your committee's hearings this week are dedicated to representations from individuals, I want to stress that my remarks reflect the collective views of the three of us. We cannot pretend that our comments will satisfy every opinion held within our dual ward school community. As you might expect, there is much diversity between and within our school parent bodies, our school communities and our overall spectrum of neighbourhoods. But the views of the parents taking part in the Mid-Town Council fall into two main categories: some who vehemently oppose this legislation in its entirety and those who have resigned themselves to the fact that the provincial government is preparing to push it through, despite significant flaws. We come before you as parents with the latter view.

We have said to ourselves, "All right, if the new legislation is going to be passed by a government that has the votes, then how do we want to influence the shape and details of that legislation?" Our touchstones have been the need for more clarity, more accountability and more timeliness. Here's our essential shopping list:

(1) We are deeply worried about class size ranges. So many of today's pedagogical practices are highly dependent on the current ranges, so if class sizes escalate significantly, we'll be facing costly and disruptive changes in curriculum and teaching practices. Common sense dictates that smaller groups give greater opportunity to focus on individual needs. The minister has committed that he will not touch the classroom, so the legislation should guarantee that statement by entrenching class size limits from JK through high school.

(2) We are insistent that certain items deemed as out-of-classroom extras, such as physical education, be guaranteed as core curriculum at the primary level and be widely offered as elective programs at the high school level. Today's children are 50% less active than our generation. What impact will this have on our health care system in the future? We must show our students how to respect and fulfil their bodies as well as their minds.

Language programs: In this age of global markets and trade, can we question the value of foreign languages and culture? Visual performing arts and music: Stimulation and disciplined training of the creative powers is part of being a more fulfilled and balanced human being, and such training can also enhance creativity and sensitivity in science, technology and business. Learning to learn should be a beautiful experience. Math, science and technology programs with adequate computer resources: The minister's passion for "a computer on every desk" is meaningless unless we have the trained teachers who are up to date in changing technology and clear links between computer technology and the curriculum at every level. Are we ready?

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(3) The government has spoken, but vaguely, about extra funds to underwrite a range of extra needs, including the undeniable special needs of a diverse and complex school community such as Toronto. Delivery of extra support is done by our educational and administrative assistants, who can often bridge the gap between our students' needs and constrained resources, and by vital psychological and social services to support student learning. These programs and personnel are essential, they are not extras. The federal government budget promised increased educational funding and our provincial government is now indicating the same. Tell us what methods will be used to analyse and allocate priorities to the extra needs of the greater Toronto community, including guarantees for the necessary funding.

(4) The implications of Bill 104 and the rescheduled implementation of the ministry's PPM 122 will necessarily call for an increased level of direct and substantial participation by school community councils and particularly parents, who are already hard-pressed for time and resources, in advising on matters of governance, communications and curriculum implementation at their schools. Parents need greater clarity about their expected roles and duties. What training and resources will be provided to these councils and the parent participants so that their mandated duties can be fulfilled credibly and consistently?

(5) Will the new public school boards be able to deal effectively with the "urgent priorities for the future" that our government emphasizes, such as information retrieval and information management, when we are massively underfunding our school libraries and, perhaps worse, decimating our population of teacher-librarians and library technologists, thereby ensuring that our children are ill-trained to use information resources?

(6) Will we view teacher training and retraining in the same old ways or will we apply new modalities of professional evaluation, including advancement and recognition by merit as opposed to seniority? Will there be fewer impediments to cross-board recruitment and hiring? How will we encourage quality instruction personnel in all Ontario communities?

(7) We seek clarification about how the modified school board system can secure the services of the best-qualified trustees. Must you be independently wealthy in order to serve? If not, what realistic enhancements will be available to encourage trustee candidates of quality? As a supplement to the trustee function, what about the number and mandate of school superintendents? Can we get commitments that parents will enjoy adequate access to a sufficient number of empowered bureaucrats who have a direct and responsive role in their children's educational wellbeing?

(8) We urge that a common code of accounts be adopted across the province so that all school board financial accountability and performance analysis can be better conducted from a reasonably comparative platform. Will we be able to conduct adequate comparisons of resources and performance between the public and separate school systems?

(9) We need a renewed and appropriately detailed statement of objectives and mandate for the ministry and for its subsidiary mechanisms, including the EIC and the revised school board system, which would include a statutory declaration concerning an unequivocal commitment to quality education for all children in Ontario.

(10) The main task of implementing Bill 104 has been allocated to the proposed Education Improvement Commission. We require much greater transparency about the commission's structure and operation. We find it totally unacceptable that the commission's activities cannot be questioned in the courts. We citizens can seek legal recourse against our government, so why not the government's creature?

In conclusion, we want clarity, we want accountability, and to achieve these objectives as expressed with adequate detail, we want timeliness. Slow down the process, to get it right. Of most importance, enshrine the clarifications and commitments within the legislation so that the citizens of this province will become more confident that its government is truly committed to all our children.

To quote the acclaimed education author Neil Postman: "School will endure since no one has invented a better way to introduce the young to the world of learning; the public school will endure since no one has invented a better way to create a public; and childhood will survive because without it we must lose our sense of what it means to be an adult."

The Acting Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Goulet.

SHEILA CARY-MEAGHER

The Acting Chair: I'd like to call Sheila Cary-Meagher, please. Welcome to the hearings.

Ms Sheila Cary-Meagher: Good evening. For those of you who like context and don't have blue sheets, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Sheila Cary-Meagher. I am the mother of five, stepmother of three and grandmother of six. I have been involved in education all my adult life over three continents and five countries. I have lived half my life as a Canadian citizen and the other half as an American. Thirty years ago I chose Canada, I chose Ontario, I chose Toronto for its unpretentious, good quality of life. A great part of that decision was based on an education system that outstripped all I had seen.

If this school system has a product -- and I think that analogy is an appalling and disrespectful way to speak of children -- it is the people who are this country's future.

In the recent past, it was the Canadian public school system that produced the bulk of our leaders, not an élite group of private schools, not a select moneyed class, not a family compact. Our present system works extremely hard to provide well for an incredible diversity of race, language, nationality, religion and class. As a parent, a trustee and a taxpayer, I have seen it up close and personal.

When I was nine, I was in a split grade 4-5 of 52 children and a teacher who was emotionally breaking down because it was all simply too much for her. It was a hellish experience. My hands can still feel the pain of the wooden ruler with the metal edge that was administered because I could not read or spell properly. There was neither time nor money nor experience nor people enough to deal with slow children. Instead, I was left to finish my education believing that I was just dumb. At 41 I was diagnosed a dyslexic. Imagine what it is like for a child to grow up believing that she is stupid when she was only disabled. Imagine the waste. Imagine the anger.

Bill 104 promises to deliver that experience to many children with its stripped down version of education, with its return to the 1940s, with the de-skilling of the people who are to care for our children, our future and, indeed, for my grandchildren. Bill 104 is a kind of hands-off child abuse, but abuse none the less.

What is extraneous to the classroom? Libraries? Testing for disabilities, dysfunction, disease? Cleanliness and safety in the classroom, the gym, the school yard? Administrators, secretaries and aides who make undisrupted and pleasant a child's day?

In a rich, sophisticated society like ours, why is it necessary to give our children a barebones version of learning? Could it be the Chicago experience, indeed the American experience, of making the public system so uncongenial that those who can afford to will send their children out of it and into a new system of for-profit schools? Can it be that anyone is still fooled by the idea that Canada can't afford good, free, public education? Can it be that the Americans have so hoodwinked or bullied those in power to follow their example? My God, can we afford to become America revisited? Why the hell would we want to?

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I asked myself over and over during the Mulroney decade why that government couldn't see what it was doing. I asked the same question at the beginning of the Harris years, and then, sadly, I realized that you did understand, you do understand the havoc you are wreaking, you do mean to do it. You mean to create an uneducated underclass, you mean to create a pool of cheap labour. You probably don't mean to create misery, but if it falls out from what you do mean to do, it isn't your fault.

In addition to what you are planning to the process of educating children, I now understand that you wish to further pillage our system by selling off our school buildings and school lands and then leasing them back through your EIC when they deem it necessary. Since I believe that you fully know what you are doing, there is no use in quoting statistics on how and where that process has failed in both the US and England. But in the short term you will steal from Metro Toronto alone better than $5 billion dollars.

I like to dream of a Dante-like circle in hell for those in power who turn their backs on children, those who waste their possibilities and who doom them to failure, who sell their birthright for a mess of pottage. I picture that circle and it gives very little comfort while I wait and organize for payoff time. Perhaps we should start with a tax revolt and then -- well, I'm not sure, but hell hath no fury like a grandmother whose children and grandchildren are under threat.

Applause.

The Acting Chair: It's not usual that we have applause in the committee rooms.

Ms Cary-Meagher: I didn't arrange it.

The Acting Chair: I permit it because I think there's an expression of empathy, which I acknowledge, but I would ask you to limit it.

You have three minutes, one minute each party. Mr Martin, would you like to begin?

Mr Martin: You certainly made some very poignant and --

Ms Cary-Meagher: I'm sorry, I'm old and I can't hear very well.

Mr Martin: Sorry. You certainly made some very important and poignant points here tonight. Your reference to America revisited reminds me of last week, when I was in the standing committee on finance and economic affairs and an economist came in talking about how wonderfully Ontario was doing in the eyes of the international monetary gurus, and there was some comment there about Mike Harris being more like an American than a Canadian. Perhaps that's true.

The premise upon which the change is being made is that we're producing an inferior product, that we're producing a mediocre product. Would you like to comment on that?

Ms Cary-Meagher: It's not true. It's not true in a thousand different ways. I have been a teacher. Both my husbands were university professors. I have children who teach in university. Our experience generally has been that if you want good education come to the city of Toronto, or at least come to Ontario. I go back to the States on a regular basis and visit friends and family there. As just a kind of tiny mark, the condition of the schools and the school yards there is appalling. I come back here and I look around and I think, "At least the school across from my house looks like a place where children could be comfortable and happy. It looks like it's used and not locked and just a dirt patch."

The children that come from the Toronto system, which is the one I know the best, can, for the most part, go any place they want to university, should they be able to afford it nowadays.

The Acting Chair: We have one minute for each member, so I'm sorry, I'm going to have to --

Ms Cary-Meagher: I'm sorry.

Mr Skarica: I believe you referred to the Chicago system. I don't know if you're familiar with the book by Martha Collins, who is a teacher in Chicago. Are you?

Ms Cary-Meagher: I'm sorry?

Mr Skarica: Martha Collins wrote a book. She was a teacher in Chicago.

Ms Cary-Meagher: No, I'm not referring to that.

Mr Skarica: She set up her own school at a fraction of the cost of the public system there, which was producing students with very poor results. What she did was, she introduced rigour into the curriculum and she had high standards that she expected of the children. The teachers were told to basically teach and not have any other functions, not fill out millions of forms and those types of things. What happened there was the students did very well in the inner school but at a fraction of the cost of the inner city. Perhaps you could comment. We've heard already that even in Metro Toronto you have a wide variation of money spent, from Scarborough at $7,000 to Toronto at $8,000. So it's not money per se. Money is part of it, but there are other things that determine the quality of education.

Ms Cary-Meagher: I have never noticed that people care that the money they spend on education is high or low as long as it produces good results for their children. I have been struck recently by the insurance system -- I'm drawing an analogy -- which now tries to divide the people who don't have accidents from the people who do have accidents. The people who don't have accidents get lower rates and the people who do have accidents get higher rates. I'm sorry, but I had thought the idea was to spread it over the entire population, and the same is true of education.

If you give me a bunch of really smart kids with no problems, for very little money I can teach them just about anything, but if they've got family problems or if they've got physical problems or any kind of problem, it's going to cost me money. That's the thing that's so frightening about what this bill is all about. It drives the people who can afford it out of the public system and leaves behind the poor, who can't afford to leave. This is the Chicago experience: black, downtown, poor -- public education; rich, middle class, white -- uptown education.

Mr Skarica: Perhaps you should read the Martha Collins book. She dealt with the black, the disadvantaged children, the very poorest of the poor that the public system was not dealing with, and those are the kids she in fact took.

Mrs McLeod: I want to use my moment just to thank you for your presentation, because I think it's a significant one among some very fine presentations that have been made tonight. If the conditions that Mr Goulet set out in the last presentation could be met with a guarantee, all of us would relax somewhat, although I personally would still be very concerned about the loss of local governance, which I think is implicit in this bill.

I don't think we're going to get those guarantees. We can't even get answers to the questions about how students' needs are going to be met with adequate financial resources. I think all we can do is share your fears and try and make people understand what we see as being the consequences of this bill.

My grandson was born the day that Bill 26 was passed last winter, and I really believe that was a sad day because it was the beginning of seeing some of the most basic values that we believe in eroded. I think that's what we're still seeing today in Bill 104. I don't know if the government understands why some of us feel as emotional about this bill as we do. It looks like such a simple thing. I think what you've done tonight is bring a real sense of the emotion and the passion that underlie people's fears of this bill, so thank you.

The Acting Chair: Ms Cary-Meagher, thank you kindly for coming this evening.

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JOANNE NAIMAN

The Acting Chair: I now call forward Joanne Naiman.

Ms Joanne Naiman: I've got an extra friend. I was only going to bring my son, but I've now got his friend as well.

The Acting Chair: Welcome to you and to your consultants.

Ms Naiman: This thing was originally addressed to Daniel, so Gavin can listen and I may refer to him at some point.

I'm Joanne Naiman. I guess you know from your crib sheets I'm a professor of sociology at Ryerson Polytechnic University and a parent in the Toronto school board.

I am appearing tonight with my son Daniel, who's a grade 5 student at Hillcrest Community School, and his friend Gavin Nolan is joining us as well. I have brought him here tonight because I think there are some important things that he needs to learn. We parents who oppose the current cuts to education are commonly charged with being opposed to change. Quite the contrary. There are many changes I would like to see made in the current system, and one is my desire to see our children far more informed and involved in the social and political world that surrounds them. It's for this reason that I've brought him here tonight: to teach him, I hope, an important lesson about the democratic process and the way governments work. Listen carefully, Daniel. You're going to be tested at the end, just to see how much you know.

This isn't in my speech, but I want to start by saying how absolutely -- I think the word "disgusted" doesn't really cut how I feel coming tonight to this session to see how many people are absent and how insulting it is to people who have taken days to prepare to speak. I'm used to speaking publicly; others have never done it before. They take this event very seriously. They're distressed about what's happening to public education, and I think the show, I'm sorry to say, of all the parties is very disturbing to me and reflects what's happening to our public education system. It's just really shoddy. Let me put it that way.

To watch the faces of people -- I was here this afternoon -- falling asleep while people are talking, reading other material: It's unacceptable. I teach this 10-year-old child that it's rude not to listen when people are talking and I really, really urge all of you sitting here today to do that when others talk, even if they're not perhaps the most forceful speakers. We do care about our children, and I hope you do the same. Let me move on.

I start with the definition of "democracy" that I've taken from the Canadian Encyclopedia. It reads as follows: "democracy: term originating in ancient Greece to designate a government where the people share in directing the activities of the state, as distinct from governments controlled by a single class, select group, or autocrat. The definition of democracy has been expanded, however, to describe a philosophy that insists on the right and the capacity of people, acting either directly or through representatives, to control their institutions for their own purposes."

Those are pretty big words, Daniel, so let me put it more simply. Democracy means a government that rules on behalf of the majority of the people. Now some people, including the current government of Ontario, take that to mean that democracy is nothing more than what people do on one particular day when they go to the ballot box and vote. After that, the party with the most seats, especially if it has a majority, gets to do, apparently, whatever it wants. Many of us, however, don't see it that way. Once elected, a government should continue to govern in the best interests of the people, to listen to their requests and, as best they can, respond to the wishes of the majority.

Since this government won the election, it has seemed less and less interested in hearing from the people. Well over 1,000, I think around 1,200 people, have asked to speak to this committee, Daniel, even half of them who may be here tonight, but the government wasn't interested in listening, so only a lucky few of us are here. Under the proposed Bill 104, a small group that hasn't even been elected will be able to do whatever they want to the education system for the next three years and no one will be able to oppose them and there will be so few elected trustees left that they will have little time to hear from their constituents. That doesn't sound like democracy to me.

Look around you, Daniel, and here's what you see already in Ontario: Hospitals are closing -- just yesterday four in Ottawa; health services are being eroded; aid to the needy is being cut; women's shelters are being shut; protection for working people and our environment is being eliminated; and, of course, the public education system in Ontario, a system that has taken over 100 years to build, is slowly being bled to death.

Daniel, if you look at what's happening across this province, you will see this is not a government that cares about people. If you look around the world at other places where similar processes have already been happening, places such as England, New Zealand and the United States, you can see governments like our own that seem to care more about the profits of the biggest corporations and benefits for the wealthiest citizens than they do about ordinary people.

Wherever these cuts have come, we find a consistent pattern: a new system of supposedly "public" education where those kids -- and I'll be honest, like you, Daniel -- who have parents with a little more money, they're still able to buy them a good education, while other kids whose parents can't afford it increasingly get a second-class education. You know, Daniel, based on what I've read, I really have to say that I think Mr Snobelen was telling a fib the other day when he said there would be no second-class students in Ontario.

I think there are some other areas where Mr Snobelen isn't giving us the full story. In the United States -- the previous speaker spoke on it -- which has suffered from almost 15 years of cuts to education, 25% of high school teachers are unqualified, and that goes up to 40% in math, and 30% of teachers quit within the first three years.

In New Zealand, where they've also had drastic changes in education, the stress of change on teachers has been so enormous that hundreds of teachers have simply quit teaching. What's more, teachers are spending so much time with administrative and financial upheavals that they have little time left for teaching. In a three-year period, ending in the spring of 1996 in New Zealand, there was a 42% turnover in primary school principals, mainly as a result of stress.

In England, the main activity of schools is now public relations and self-promotion in order to recruit and retain students in the new open marketplace of education.

Now since my son is new to all of this, could those of you who are members of the Conservative Party just raise your hands so he will know which one of you --

Mr Morley Kells (Etobicoke-Lakeshore): We're all over on this side.

Ms Naiman: You're all over here. Okay, this is the Conservative Party, Daniel. Now, Daniel, when you watch those shows on television, the ones I can't stand, you know, those awful shows like Spiderman and all that, on those shows the bad guys are always obvious. You know, they're the most creepy guys with the odd-looking weird faces and so on. But I want you to look, Daniel, and Gavin too who's sitting here, because I want you to see that in real life the bad guys look just like everybody else -- well, okay, almost just like the rest of us. We don't know too many who wear blue suits.

I brought you here tonight in part because I want you to see those faces. I want you to look at them. I want you to see the faces of the people who want to take away the things you love most about school. I want you to took at them carefully because it's not going to be too long from now when you and Gavin and all your friends will be able to vote and I want you to remember who tried to steal good-quality public education away from the citizens of this province.

I want all of you, every one of you, to look at these guys and I want you to tell them to their faces -- I ask the members of the Conservative Party to tell them which one of the things are going to be taken away from them if Bill 104 passes and you make your proposed spending cuts. Which one of you is willing to tell my son that his beloved hockey team will be gone in the next year, or his after-school program, or the teacher-librarian, or his music program, or his intergenerational choir, or his gym class, or that instead of the already unacceptable 33 he now has in his class, he will be in a class of 36, 40, or 44? Or to tell him that some of his friends won't get special ed, gifted programs or ESL programs in the future?

You see, Daniel, governments are able to do bad things to people by not having to look at us when they do it. They get others, such as the Education Improvement Commission, to do it for them. Bill 104 is just the beginning. We're being told we're getting more democracy in new school councils, but with schools being given less money, it will then force us to make the cuts, force us to choose between your music or your gym program, to choose whether to get rid of the teacher-librarian or raise your class size, force us to sell off our school to the private sector piece by piece in the hope of maintaining the integrity of your programs. That doesn't seem very fair, does it, Daniel or Gavin, asking us to take the blame for something we didn't do and didn't even want?

There's one more really important lesson and it's my last for tonight that I want you to learn: Democracy is not something that's given to us by others. It's something our ancestors had to fight for and now that we've got it, we've got to be vigilant that it isn't taken away.

Here in Canada most of us take democracy for granted. But what we're seeing now, Daniel, is that democracy is ever so slowly being eroded in this province. That's why your mom, your dad and many others are increasingly speaking out. We want to tell this government that we reject Bill 104. We reject their anti-people agenda. We reject cuts to education. We reject the myth, and it is a myth, that there just isn't any money out there. We're telling all of you in all the political parties that we won't go away until our government, and I don't care who's in power, gives us the education system that the citizens across this province deserve. Thank you.

The Acting Chair: Your time is up. Thank you very much.

Ms Naiman: Good. He was worried he'd have to say something.

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PATRICIA ALDANA

The Acting Chair: Can I call Patricia Aldana forward, please. Welcome. Thank you for coming.

Ms Patricia Aldana: Thank you for inviting me to appear before this committee. I'd like to declare my membership in several special interest groups right before I start. I'm a parent of four children, two of whom are still in schools in this city. I'm a resident of Toronto, hence bound to be a big loser in what you're proposing. Finally, I'm an anachronism. I'm a children's book publisher. I don't make computer software. I don't make materials that sing, dance or move. They're just plain books.

There's so much wrong with Bill 104 it's hard to know where to begin, so I'll focus on a matter dear to my heart and which I consider to be fundamental to education: the ability to read and the natural outgrowth of that skill, which is to be able to write, something that I think should be at the absolute heart of every child's education. I fear that what you're proposing, and the view of education which seems to be held by your government, will be devastating to literacy in Ontario and to children's ability to read and write here.

What is my evidence? The first proof is the infamous KPMG study -- I thought it was the KPMG study, but maybe it's the Ernst and Young study -- which places school libraries in some kind of limbo of otherness, not part of classroom learning. That is utterly preposterous. School libraries lie at the heart of the teaching of reading and writing in any school.

The second proof: At a recent parents' meeting at my child's elementary school, Isabel Bassett, who's my MPP, and two officials from Mr Snobelen's office said boldly and cheerfully when I questioned what would happen to school libraries that they were going to save school libraries by getting rid of school librarians and replacing them with technicians. That's freeing up money to save school libraries. That is an oxymoron, in my opinion: to save a library by removing the librarian. The school library is its librarian. That is all that it is. It's a bunch of books, but it is the school librarian.

I can't even begin to sketch an argument as to the critical role of school libraries and librarians, but I'd like to just tell you a few things that a teacher-librarian does in the schools, in case you don't know.

One of the most important things they do is to engender a love of reading in children in the school. They're at the absolute heart of the book and the school. They select the books. That requires extensive knowledge and training. Canadian books, for example, although they're internationally acknowledged to be world class, are unlikely to be known to technicians who have no training in librarianship. This, combined with the fascination that seems to be reigning with software -- which is almost 100% American; there is very little Canadian software -- means that the problem we have with no knowledge about Canada existing in the schools is going to be aggravated to a great degree.

School librarians bring authors and illustrators into schools. This shows children that real people write books. It engages them in those books and it engages them in the idea of writing and illustrating as a possible career as well as something that they can do in their time at school, something positive and fun.

School librarians teach the principal and the other teachers about books, so that they can use them in their curriculum. They help to build classroom libraries. Every school uses classroom libraries now to teach or they used to when they had money to buy classroom libraries. They don't seem to any more.

Librarians are essential for teaching children how to do research. When you get kids doing research on the Net -- I don't know. It's amazing to me that Tories could support using the Net for learning. Have you ever used the Net yourselves? It is full of misinformation. It is not selected, it is not evaluated, it is not edited; it is none of the things a good book is. It's a place where you can have a lot of fun and you can get all kinds of stuff from all over the place, but it is not really currently a place where you can learn anything, do good research. You need a school librarian if you're going to be getting kids to do that, to show them how to use this mass of undigested information. It does surprise me that Tories would support the Net the way that they seem to be.

Also, of course, there's the fascination with computers and the idea that kids can learn how to read from a computer. I'm sorry; reading is a lot more than just sitting and looking at a bunch of words on a screen. You still need books to learn how to read.

But let's go back to your plans. Mrs Bassett's comments that some school boards across this province had failed to fall in line with the budget cuts and continued and insisted on having school librarians has forced, according to her, the ministry to take this drastic action I think is a pretty sorry comment on the school boards and a pretty sorry comment on our future.

The Ministry of Education is not a place that I want to look to to save us or to save our school libraries. Over the past 20 years, the ministry could have done a great deal to encourage school libraries, to help them to be richer, to have more staffing, to have more book budgets. They've never done that. The Ministry of Education has never shown any interest in increasing book budgets in this province or in supporting the development of school libraries. Ontario has one of the lowest per capita expenditures in Canada on books, and when you want to ask why kids in Ontario don't perform very well, one of the reasons you might think to look to is the fact that books are increasingly not a part of the schools, and it's going to be a lot worse.

The place I'd like to put my faith is in the school boards, which have done a great job with our school libraries. In such boards, and many of them are in Metro Toronto but they are across the province as well, there are schools where a single inspired teacher-librarian has inculcated a love of books and reading which will last for a whole lifetime. These people are an irreplaceable treasure. They will be eliminated by your Minister of Education.

Think about the ministry itself. It's been responsible for the common curriculum, the mishandled destreaming of grade 9, abandoning of the enforcement of Circular 14, a key tool in the Canadianization of education in this province. Are we supposed to trust these people to be running the education for all the kids in Ontario? I don't think so. We do need education reform: slow, gradual and intelligent, built by local communities within a properly constructed and funded framework.

We know why this is happening, and there's no question about it: Bill 104 is a way to allow you to fund your tax cut. I don't think that's fair to the children.

Mr Snobelen has said that he believes in radical change, that you need to break things to change them. This reminds me of the Maoist saying that you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. He is a radical, and he will ensure that a generation of children in this province will be losers. It will take decades to undo this kind of damage. You're going to lose a generation of readers. When are they ever going to learn to read? Meanwhile, children in other jurisdictions and in other countries are becoming better educated. Our kids will have to compete with them, and how can they do that?

Mr Froese: Thank you very much. You had indicated that you feel the school boards are doing a good job. I probably couldn't agree with you more with respect to not enough funding and not enough resources going into books for our children in our schools. We had a presentation earlier today that kind of said the reverse of -- the individual who made the presentation was upset that their school board only spent $80 per child on books and they spent on other things, like a quarter of their budget on photocopying instead of books. So on one hand you are saying that you're in support of your school board and what they have done, and when we try and look at this whole situation, everybody knows there need to be changes in education, but as a government, we're trying to balance off what is right here.

What is your comment with respect to those arguments where people are saying that our school boards aren't spending enough on books?

Ms Aldana: I think you can mandate a per capita expenditure on books without getting rid of school boards.

Mr Froese: The school boards control the budgets on books, so why aren't they doing that?

Ms Aldana: I just said I believe the school system can do with some reform, but I don't think that means you have to kill the school boards in order to get books into the schools. In British Columbia, for example, there are very creative programs for getting books into schools.

Mr Froese: So why aren't the school boards doing it then?

Ms Aldana: There are provincial programs for getting books into schools. They still have school boards in British Columbia.

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Mrs McLeod: I'll try and stay on 104, although your focus on reading and the importance of reading and where that's going to fall gets me thinking about the proposed secondary school curriculum reforms, which are not on our agenda tonight but which, as you know, involve significantly reduced hours for the teaching of English. I think too that is all about cost-cutting and not about education, let alone about literacy skills.

But maybe you would just comment on how much more difficult it might be to make the government understand the importance of the school librarian if there is no local school board to make that case to.

Ms Aldana: I think where the school boards have been committed to school libraries is where you have, as in Toronto, for example, entire structures which have created excellent, powerful school libraries.

By the way, when people say the children of Ontario are not a good product -- I would just like to return to that question someone asked. My children have gone to school in France, and I'll tell you one thing about children from Ontario, and particularly children from Toronto, one way in which they're incredibly successful citizens of this world. They are not racist, they are not hating of other people, they are not xenophobic. They are broadminded and they are children who know something about the rest of the world as well as about themselves. I think part of that, personally, with my bias towards reading, is because they have been very well educated, and I think that is one of the most successful things about Canada.

When I come back here, I think we have really produced something in this country by producing these kids who are so tolerant and open and sophisticated in terms of the world. That is a triumph because, let me tell you, they can't do it in a lot of other places, the United States and France included.

Mr Martin: I obviously agree with you that books and reading are really important. I've said earlier today I have four kids still in school, and I love it when I come home and they're all off someplace reading. You have mentioned in your presentation the threat that you see to libraries and librarians and that kind of thing by way of this bill. We've had other people who talked about English as a second language and a whole lot of other programs that the Toronto school board particularly has spent a lot of time and effort and resources putting together and presenting to their kids.

The question I was going to ask you, which you have already answered and you might want to expand on some more, is this question of mediocrity, that the reason we're changing the system and making the drastic change that is being proposed in Bill 104 is that we're producing a mediocre product.

Ms Aldana: No. And by the way, it's not just Toronto that has great school boards. It's not. There are other great school boards across this province, and there are ones where an enormous amount of work goes on in reading and writing that I know a lot about. We're not producing mediocre kids. There are mediocre school boards in this province, absolutely, and they need help and funding, and there's a lot the province could be doing to help kids, where they have not been properly served by their local situation, to improve. But to destroy what's good -- the Toronto board should be taken as a model for the province instead of being destroyed, it seems to me. There's so much that could be done within the existing context.

The Acting Chair: Ms Aldana, thank you kindly for coming and sharing your views with us this evening. We appreciate it.

ANN LANDREY

The Acting Chair: I call Mr Adrian Heaps, please.

Ms Ann Landrey: Members of the committee, Mr Heaps has been called away on a family emergency and he asked me -- my name is Ann Landrey -- to present his deposition in his absence. I will do it the best service I can, but if I stumble, please bear with me.

Over the last few weeks, parents and educators across

Ontario have been subjected to the government's recent proposals to drastically reduce the number of school boards from 167 to 66. As the committee is aware, the government also intends to severely reduce the number of trustees as well as staffing in order to satisfy their desire to, as Mr Harris puts it, put our children at the front of the class.

I am not an educator, but from my vantage point, it doesn't take an educated person to see that the government has not learned the fundamentals of what it actually takes to teach a child. We have been told that our children are poorly educated and not adequately prepared for the economic rigours of modern society. Mr Harris and Minister Snobelen have also tried to sell the idea that our children must be trained for specific job skills in order to compete in the international marketplace.

Let's look at these arguments. First, the idea that education must be job-specific is patently wrong. After the Second World War, the Canadian government funded all sorts of job programs to employ the masses who returned from the war. The job training was specific and directed towards specialized manufacturing jobs that for a while became high-paying. But changing times and new technologies made these specialized job skills gradually obsolete, leaving thousands out of work with no place to apply their highly specialized skills. Now the government proposes to once again champion job-specific training. The first lesson the government should learn is not to repeat the mistakes of history.

If we want to truly educate our children to be productive and contributing members of society, we need to look at an education that teaches the whole individual, not just a part of him. We need to teach people the logic of thinking and decision-making and we also need to expose young students to the creative side of their personality. Without creativity, we don't have thinkers. Without creativity, we don't have people who will make a difference, not just economically, not just socially, but also in their personal lives.

If we once again look at history, we will see that the greatest inventors, like Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo and Einstein, were all people who had an education that combined the best of the sciences with the best of the arts, liberating in them the creativity and lateral thinking that made them icons and models to follow.

The idea of providing a well-rounded education is almost universally subscribed to, yet the government believes it knows more than the Royal Commission on Learning, more than the combined expertise of principals and teachers and researchers -- and since he allowed me to make comments on his presentation, I would add parents as well. I'm sure he would concur with me in that sentiment.

On other fronts, Mr Snobelen has said that publicly funded education in Ontario is too expensive. The truth is that Ontario's per pupil funding is the 46th lowest of 63 jurisdictions in Canada and the US. Ontario currently spends less per pupil than any of the school boards in Michigan, New York, Quebec or Manitoba. Of course we can always reduce costs. We can also double class size and theoretically reduce the number of teachers by half. We could ration chalk and have students double-team on computers. But would this would not improve the quality of education.

No one is naïve enough to think that improvements are not needed, and many have suggested that merging a number of services and even some boards could cut costs in addition to improving the quality of education, yet the government's proposals offer a much darker view of how education should be run in this province. The first stage of this proposal is to take all of our money that we allocate to education and send it to the Ontario government. The second stage is to reduce the number of school boards and trustees and to instead replace them with school advisory councils. All of this, along with the revamping of over 600 academic programs, will be overseen by a government-appointed Education Improvement Commission.

I am a little surprised. On one hand the government tells us that our children should be better prepared for the world, yet on the other, they offer a loosely woven set of ideas that they call a plan. Parents in this province do not expect their teachers and principals to come to school without a prepared curriculum, so why should we expect anything less from Mr Snobelen? Shouldn't we expect the government to come to the table with a coherent, well-thought-out plan that speaks to the true educational needs of children in this province? Is this the kind of example of learning that we want to set for students to follow?

Secondly, the government believes that parent-run councils can run the essential aspects of a school's operation. As a chair of a council and after having talked to over 100 other councils, I can categorically tell you that working parents have neither the time, the inclination nor the required skill -- and I'm adding energy -- to run a school, no more than you or members of this committee should be responsible for offering advice on running a hospital or an auto plant.

Parents want a definite say in their children's education, but generally speaking, they respect teachers and principals enough to know they are the real experts. Perhaps Mr Snobelen and Mr Harris could learn a lesson from this philosophy.

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Something else to think about: The Ontario government wants to have all property taxes paid directly to them. The funds would go into a huge melting pot of money. The government would then allocate a new budget as they see fit back to school boards. The problem with this is that schools will now have to fight in competition for every other program at the provincial level. Furthermore, the so-called Education Improvement Commission will have the power to approve budgets to the minister.

Essentially, this will leave parents out of the key decision-making process. "Don't worry," says the government, "parents will still have decision-making powers," that is, when it comes to the kindergarten picnic and staff barbecues.

Admittedly, criticizing the government is not enough. Educators and parents have to offer constructive alternatives if we really want to improve our system. Well, here's a couple of suggestions. The government keeps talking about goals and expectations, so why not apply this thinking to improving our education system? I suggest that the Minister of Education clearly lay out his plans to include an educational bill of rights that would form the foundation of a new educational policy. I would then suggest he clearly lay out goals and expectations for each school board to follow. This could include budget, curriculum demands and reasonable time limits to accomplish the job.

If the government were truly interested in improving education in Ontario, it would look at applying this idea to one or two boards, see if it works, assess the results, and then if successful, apply it to other boards. It would reduce costs, improve education standards and take full advantage of the vast reservoir of knowledge that exists in the educational community. Mr Snobelen would be surprised at what he could achieve if he decided to work with people instead of against them.

Unfortunately the government is not that concerned with education. Their mandate is to satisfy their budget projections by dramatically increasing their revenues. So where is the largest untapped cache of revenues? It is, of course, in the treasure chest of property taxes. From this money, Mr Harris can fulfil his tax rebate promise. But I can't help but think of all the studies that clearly point out that education is not a cost to the province but rather an investment in the future of Ontario. The returns on this investment are incalculable, with returns on jobs, less crime and better citizens, that could set an example, not just to the rest of Canada but to the world.

As with Bill 103, the government chooses not to look for constructive alternatives but rather to dig in their heels for what could be a good idea that has been mutated into political gain. As John Marquis once stated, "The problem with politicians is that when they get an idea, they get it all wrong."

This is not a time to dig in one's heels and posture like two kids in a playground, for what we are talking about is the future of education. That goes way beyond the government's mandate. This is a time to set an example to students and to show them that we have their best interests at heart and not the government's.

The Acting Chair: Thank you, Ms Landrey. We appreciate that. Your full time is up.

KATIE BROCK

The Acting Chair: Let me call Katie Brock. Thank you for coming. You have 10 minutes.

Ms Katie Brock: Before I start, I just want to provide you with a little bit of context. While I might not be an expert in government or in education, I have gone to school in the Halton Board of Education, which I think was an excellent board of education and which was at that time under the provincial direction of Premier Bill Davis. So I think I have a historical perspective to some extent on personal experiences with the school board, as well as current experiences with the city of Toronto school board and the East York school board, with which a program I worked with is affiliated. I think those two are also excellent models of what a school board can achieve.

I'm particularly impressed by things that the Halton Board of Education and the Toronto Board of Education have spent money for in order to support their students and make sure they fulfil their entire potential. This includes things like special education, adult education and support services for students who need them.

That said, I want to share with you some comments of one of the adult students who is in my program. The people in my program are primarily English-speaking, most of them are citizens of Canada or have been residents for quite a long time and they're adults who need assistance with developing or upgrading their basic adult literacy and numeracy skills.

One of these adult learners mentioned that she was really concerned about Bill 104, and her concerns and mine overlap. So this afternoon when I talked to her, I decided to try and present both her comments and mine. I only had since yesterday morning to prepare this, so it's not comprehensive. We both also had difficulty reading Bill 104, so I'm not sure I'm addressing all of the points there.

The name of the learner that I'm going to describe is Cathy. Cathy says, and I agree: "We have the right to say how adult students and children are educated" in this province. "Money comes from all of our taxes and so we should have a say in what our money is going to pay for."

I would add that this bill does not tell me how I or anyone else who pays taxes in this province will have a say in the proposed structures. The improvement commission, their designated experts and the improvement committee members are going to be appointed by the province. Their pay will, I'm sure, be generous, commensurate with their vast powers and duties.

At the same time, school board trustees, who are elected, will not be paid a wage that matches their hours, duties and efforts. I would add that in the city of Toronto, they're not just restricted to minor decisions; they're dealing with a large budget, they're dealing with a context in which many of the newcomers to Toronto need additional services like ESL. Many families are living in poverty and need additional support services to make sure those children are successful, and many people need additional services after school, such as adult education.

Some people are to be excluded from the few elected positions that will still be available if they happen to be married to an employee of a mega school board. I think that's an awful lot of people to exclude from performing a civic duty if you use the proposed amalgamated Metro school board as an example. There's no explanation as well in the bill as to why spouses should be excluded.

What the bill does tell us is who will not be consulted in the making of policy and the allocation of our money.

Cathy also says that the proposed Education Improvement Commission and committees they appoint "should be held responsible for what they do: responsible to the public and to the courts. These powers should have some people to answer to. Even a Supreme Court judge can't do something wrong and not be pulled from the bench. He or she has to go before the courts to answer for what they have done." Yet this commission won't have to answer to courts.

I agree with Cathy. I think this bill declares in very fine and elaborate legal terms all the actions the commission, the committees and their experts will not be held responsible for, and all the legal acts and statutes it is not subject to, yet the name of the bill specifically mentions accountability as one of it's major functions.

A related question that she had was: "Who is going to choose these people? They should be elected to their jobs by the people." I would also add, what qualifications should they have?

Cathy asked me: "If there are only two boards to represent the northern part of the province, how will they (the improvement commission and improvement committee members) get to meetings if they are far away?" She's pretty familiar with this because she's a representative of a learners' council in a literacy group. They have a very, very limited budget to be able to travel all together, so they do most of their things by teleconferencing.

In an era of cost-cutting, how would it be cost-effective to require further travel for commission, committee members and trustees? Who could afford to do the travelling if they weren't getting paid to do it? How would local community needs and concerns be familiar to these individuals? How would local communities get to meetings to speak to them face to face? How is this better than locally directed, locally elected and locally accessible school boards?

If the money for the Metro-area school boards decreases, Cathy says: "There is going to be an overload of students for the teaching staff if they do cutbacks to the schools. Then there will not be anyone who is educated enough to make a half-decent living, and the government will have to support them in the end, for them to survive."

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If the funds available to education in Metro and all of its necessary supports are reduced, you'll be increasing the number of students who don't have a decent and equitable chance to achieve their full potential. You'll swell the numbers of those over 21 who will then need adult education classes, while at the same time making the boards choose who needs or deserves their services the most. In the Education Act as it stands the provision of services to those over 21 years of age is optional in spite of the fact that the proficiency level of the adults in a household increases the proficiency level of the children in that home. This is not just my opinion; this is something that's been found and can be supported.

I would add that currently all the adult literacy programs in Metro have a waiting list. The Ministry of Education has said through it's literacy branch that there is no more money in the pot. All the programs I know are currently struggling to serve the numbers of adults who come to them and who want help with reading, writing and basic math. We know this is only the tip of the iceberg, as reported in the international adult literacy survey that Canada participated in.

If the board of education money that goes to literacy programs and adult basic education classes disappears and we are left with only the current pot of ministry funds, which is insufficient, fewer adult learners will be served. The international adult literacy survey that Canada so proudly participated in describes the importance of a literate society. How will this literate society be ensured in Ontario when the support for adult literacy classes and programs will have to compete with children's education for shrinking funds? How will those who need special services get them? How will people who need special education right now, after they become 21, continue to receive some support for additional upgrading or prevention of regression of their skills?

If the province through these mega-boards takes control of our funds and reduces the money that currently makes Metro a centre for educational excellence, it will be showing that the words "accountability," "effectiveness" and "improvement" are just empty sounds, devoid of meaning in the real world where the rest of us work, learn and pay taxes.

Do you want to tell Cathy that it's not important for her to continue to work towards improving her skills because she's an adult?

Mrs McLeod: I guess all I can say is that I share the concerns. You've raised so many questions, all of which deserve answers, and I'm not sure there are going to be answers in time to relieve anybody's anxieties.

One of the areas in which I have a lot of anxiety is the whole area of adult education. In fact the two spectrums, junior kindergarten and adult education, are two areas where the government has already made very significant cuts in funding. The cuts in adult education for adult day school classes are about 50%, and in some areas outside of Toronto the reduction in the number of adults in day school classes is as much as 80%. No wonder people are worried about what's going to happen to adult education under the scenario of government funding. You've raised questions that need answers and I hope there'll be some forthcoming.

Mr Martin: You certainly paint a very clear picture of what we can expect if we go ahead with this legislation and life unfolds as we expect it will if the attendant reduction in money happens as well.

All of this is premised on I think the unproven statement that now the product that is produced by our education system is somehow inferior or not good enough so we have to make these major changes in order to improve that. I know that we have changes to make and I know that the system isn't perfect. With all of us participating, I'm confident that we can make it better and continue to make it better, but is the product that we're putting out now mediocre, in your experience?

Ms Brock: I don't think I have the expertise to speak to that unless you're asking me why the people who are in my program are there. If that's what you're asking me, then I could speak to that, but I don't know about the product of the overall education system in Ontario.

I know that this is a historical concern and that since even the 17th century, post-secondary institutions were complaining about the inferior product of students that they had to serve in first year, so this is a cyclical thing. It's not new. I think that improvements could be made; improvements can always be made. I'm just saying I don't think Bill 104 addresses any of the areas which I would suggest could be improved.

Mr Flaherty: Thank you, Ms Brock, and also Cathy, on whose behalf you spoke, which I found interesting as an adult student's point of view.

I want to just mention to you the role of community colleges in adult education, not to say that the role of school boards is not important in that also, but there is some overlap there with respect to which some community colleges have expressed concern, and some school boards, in that we have two sources delivering a similar service. That will have to be addressed at some point, I think.

I did want to speak briefly with you about English as a second language, adult education, children with special needs and the funding changes that are being made with respect to education in Ontario in this sense: I think you'll agree that all persons with special needs should have equal access to adequate funding so that they can take the literacy programs and take the special needs programs that they may require, and that the proposed system will eliminate the phenomenon of rich and poor school boards in Ontario, some boards with greater resources than others, and that this is an appropriate goal so that we have equal funding available for persons with special needs.

Ms Brock: If what I understand you are saying is that the proposed formula to equalize the amount spent per capita on students across the province will be achieved by this bill and that that will solve the problem of people with special needs who need supportive funding and services, I can't equate the two. I don't think that taking away funding from services that are being provided in Metro Toronto will help people with special needs who need targeted educational services in other parts of the province. I don't see how decreasing the amount available will help provide those services.

The Acting Chair: Ms Brock, I have to thank you for coming. Your time has gone over.

STEVE SHALLHORN
ALLISON SHALLHORN

The Acting Chair: Mr Steve Shallhorn? Mr Shallhorn, this is your lawyer to your left, I see.

Mr Steve Shallhorn: Yes, I'm represented by counsel here this evening.

The Acting Chair: Welcome. You know you have 10 minutes.

Mr Shallhorn: Allison is nine years old and is one of my two daughters in the public school system here in Toronto.

I'd like to thank the committee for allowing us to be present this evening and also thank the committee staff for chasing me down. At risk of public embarrassment, I got my numbers mixed up and thought I was appearing to speak about Bill 103, so I'm certainly glad I didn't invest a lot of time in a written presentation for the committee.

But while I was preparing for that, a lot of my thoughts wandered to the school system. I think that Allison and I can bring some comparisons that may be of interest to the committee, because for her short time that she's been on this planet, Allison and I have lived in Toronto, in Washington, DC, in London, England, and in Ottawa. We've had exposure to education systems in all of these places, and in particular I want to share with you very briefly some of the experiences we had in Washington, DC, which for all of us is probably an example of a city and a place that's gone wrong and that is, I think, relevant to both Bills 103 and 104.

While we were in Washington, we spent a bit of time going to what little community fairs and events there were, and one of the things that struck me as a bit odd very early on was the local school principal out very visibly in these meetings, basically hustling for students, trying very hard to convince parents to have their children go to the school. I was a little bit puzzled as to why.

A couple of months later, in a chance social occasion, I met a school trustee from Washington, DC, and he explained to me that only about half of the people in the District of Columbia actually send their kids to the public school system, that the system has broken down over the last 20 years such that essentially anybody who can afford to sends their kids to private schools, and they send their kids to private schools usually outside of the district.

This trustee explained to me that one of the problems they had been having in that city is that one of the sort of neighbourhood social fabric things that happens is that parents get to meet each other and neighbours get to meet each other often through their children, and if their kids are being sent off to different private schools away from the public system, you have a real breakdown in the fabric of neighbourhoods. That was blamed as one of the root problems -- not so much root problems but one of the continuing parts of the downward spiral of the city of Washington. In Washington, there are about half the number of trustees for a larger population.

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While we were in London, Allison had a chance to participate in the public school system there. The social fabric wasn't as degenerated in London as it was in Washington, but there the most noticeable problem was capital, the physical shape of the schools themselves. They were simply appalling, everything from the state of the stairwells to the condition of the roofs to the playground equipment, which was almost non-existent. It was obviously a system in decay. I think both of these systems were suffering from lack of funding and lack of accountability.

One of the things we've noticed here in Toronto, in the two years since we've moved back to Toronto -- I live in ward 11; I bought a home on Yarmouth Road -- is the relative accessibility of our school trustees. We see them socially, we see them at community events, and it's nice to be able to speak to someone whose responsibility it is to run the school system and to run into them often enough that you don't really expect them to remember your name but to remember you as a familiar face. I think that's very important.

I support full-time school trustees and I support them getting a half-decent wage so that they can spend their full time administering the public school system and being accountable to myself and my neighbours. I think it's totally unrealistic in a large city like this to expect people to run an education system for 100 bucks a week. I think that's an insult. I think it's an insult to myself as a parent, I think it's an insult to the children, and I think it's an insult to anyone who is considering spending their life administering the school system.

Allison would like to say a few things and then I'd like to end with a question.

Miss Allison Shallhorn: Hello. My name is Allison. I'm in grade 3 and I go to Palmerston Avenue Public School. I know I'm just a kid but I am worried that I might lose my education. I like gym, music and library and I'm excited about learning English while I'm in French. I have already lost a little bit of my library. Please try to make my education better. Thank you.

Mr Shallhorn: In the time that I have left, I'd like to ask committee members who support Bill 104 why they think an Education Improvement Commission is going to be a better system than the system of full-time paid trustees that we have in the city of Toronto.

The Acting Chair: Thank you, Mr Shallhorn, for your presentation, and Allison, thank you very much for yours as well.

Interruption.

The Acting Chair: Would you please let me respond. I heard his question and the members are free to answer, but we also have a rotating system. The first is Mr Martin, who has a chance to ask a question for a minute and a half, and then the government side. Presumably members of the government side support this legislation and they will respond to your question. That's the way it works. I know you're getting impatient in the galleries there, but there's an approach here we follow.

Mrs McLeod: Mr Chair, I'd be happy to waive my time.

The Acting Chair: Okay, fine. Thank you.

Mr Martin: I guess the most interesting part of your presentation for me was the fact that you've been exposed to different systems. The premise that this bill is being pushed on is that our system is somehow inferior and that we're not producing graduates who can participate in the world in a way that's competitive and constructive and positive. Perhaps you or Allison could talk a bit about that and why it is, I think, from your presentation, you find that what we have here is that much better than those other places that you've been.

Mr Shallhorn: There's no question that the school system here in Toronto is just vastly superior to that in Washington, DC, and in London, England, and I think you don't have to spend a lot of time in those systems to see the difference. It's not just the quality of life inside the classrooms, inside the schools, but just, as I said, the fabric of the neighbourhoods. In the school yard that Allison used to play in, it was no joke that in the morning parents would go through looking for the hypodermics, and on two occasions I had to remove them. That is the level of the public school system in these cities. I think what we have in Toronto is vastly superior and I think it needs to be preserved and needs to be protected.

The Acting Chair: Mrs McLeod has given up her time so that the government can answer the question that was posed by Mr Shallhorn.

Mr Skarica: Sir, the reason we're doing this is that -- perhaps I could refer to some of the evidence that we've heard, not from us but from where you've been sitting. For example, today we heard from Sim Brigden, who is the fund-raising committee chair of the Davisville Public School Parents Association and who sits on the school staffing committee. He had this to say about the Toronto system: "From meetings with school trustees, superintendents, Chairman David Moll and comptroller of finance Ron Trbovitch, I can only conclude that the board's primary agenda is to promote its own bloated bureaucracy."

We heard yesterday from a trustee from the Metro separate school board who indicated that in his long experience with that board, his opinion of the trustees there was that "they had failed to protect the public purse and the quality of education."

So there are a lot of people, contrary --

Interruption.

Mr Skarica: All right. We heard from another fellow --

Interruption.

The Acting Chair: Order.

Mr Skarica: You want me to answer it; I'm answering it.

Mrs McLeod: Mr Chairman, on a point of order: I waived my time so that the government could answer the question from the government's perspective.

The Acting Chair: We'll be out of time anyway.

Mr Skarica: The government's perspective is that there are a lot of people who feel the education system needs improvement and feel that the trustees in the Metro board and other boards, to quote the Metro school board trustee, who was a trustee himself, have "failed to protect the public purse and the quality of education."

The Acting Chair: Final comment, Mr Shallhorn.

Mr Shallhorn: My experience in Toronto and in other cities is that the level of representation here in Toronto is excellent and I believe the level of accountability is excellent. I would disagree with the person from Davisville and I guess I would disagree then with the rationale of this government. I think Bill 104 is a step in the wrong direction.

The Acting Chair: Mr Shallhorn and Allison, thank you very kindly for coming this evening.

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SARAH LATHA-ELLIOTT

The Acting Chair: I'd like to call Sarah Latha-Elliott, please.

Ms Sarah Latha-Elliott: Before I start, I'd just like to say that I've decided to address my comments very directly to Mr Snobelen and other education officials because I think they really need to know how young people and high school students are feeling.

I have found it very hard to be a student lately. I've found it really hard to concentrate on homework, to attend classes, to practice the piano and to have a social life. I've found it really hard to do all the things that I do normally in my everyday life as a high school student. It has been hard because I've been so busy doing the job that the government should be doing. Because you haven't once asked students how we feel about our education, we've had to organize our own process for consultation. During this process, high school students have gone around from school to school explaining Bill 104 and answering questions. We have become very good at answering questions, but there are still some which are asked at every school and that I have yet to figure out an answer to. "Where is the representative from the government?" they ask me. "Why aren't they here to explain these things to us? Why haven't they even responded to our request for a representative?"

I can say nothing to these students because it's true that time and time again we have been trying to invite you to come and speak to us and you have not even responded to our requests. Maybe that's standard procedure around here. After all, you must probably receive many requests, but when not once do you show your faces to us, people start to wonder. Students have started to wonder, and I'm telling you that we're losing faith in this government's ability to make decisions for us.

Today in high schools all across Metro a student referendum was held to give young people an opportunity to comment on Bills 103 and 104, provincial downloading and democracy in general. Watch for the results. Young people have informed opinions and you had better start listening.

I take Bill 104 very personally. I take it personally because you've bombarded the public with sound bites claiming that this is about "getting our kids back to the head of the class," yet I see nothing in Bill 104 that will improve my education. I have read the Bill in its entirety and simply cannot believe that there is no mention of student involvement in the decision-making process. You go on at great length about the role of parents, community leaders, businesses and teachers on local councils. You name virtually everyone as a stakeholder in education, but you don't name students.

Have you forgotten that schools, in accordance with ministry guidelines, teach young people not only about the three Rs but also to be responsible and participatory members of society? You cannot instill those values in us and then turn around and lock us out of the process. We've been taught very well by this education system and we're not being fooled by it.

With regard to your proposed amalgamation of the school boards, I guess I'm just a little bit confused about the logic. It seems plain to me that when it comes to maintaining a healthy democracy, smaller is better. Forgive my simplicity, but isn't it obvious that the more people an elected official has to represent, the less accessible they are to their constituents?

Last year I had the honour of being the first elected student trustee at the Toronto Board of Education. This honour came with the enormous task of representing 32,000 secondary students, fewer than one third the number of constituents each trustee will have in the new amalgamated school board. I know how hard it is to always be accessible to everyone when there are so many people, but we must always remember that accessibility to our politicians is a cornerstone of democracy.

I turn now to your famous election promise not to touch the classroom. If there was a point in all of this that made me realize that you have no idea about the reality of education in the 1990s, it was when I read your definition of the classroom. How can you even suggest that guidance and libraries are not an integral part of what we learn in classrooms? If you haven't realized yet that education is about the whole picture and not chopping it up into little bits, you have no place in the Ministry of Education.

One cannot separate the important role of classroom teachers from the important support we get from guidance counsellors, social workers, librarians and custodians. If not for these people, our schools would be dangerous, sterile and uninspiring environments, certainly not environments conducive to learning. I want to ask you straight out whether you intend to slash funding for these important services because you do not consider them part of the classroom. Come clean about your intentions and stop hiding behind ill-contrived definitions.

Interruption.

The Acting Chair: Order, please. I'm sorry. I'll ask you to leave if you do that again, so please don't do that.

Please proceed.

Ms Latha-Elliott: I want to conclude by saying that I am one of thousands of students across this province who have come to see ourselves as agents of change. Our opposition to Bill 104 is not a defence of the status quo. We believe fundamentally that real change cannot be forced upon people against their will. There are always things to be improved upon -- no one is denying that -- but we need to be part of figuring out what works and what doesn't. As someone who is in the system right now, I can tell you that a lot works.

Don't dismiss us, because we are a generation with the patience to effect positive and democratic changes.

The Acting Chair: Thank you very much. We have a little over a minute for each side, so the government side first.

Mr Skarica: Do you know an Andrew Graham?

Ms Latha-Elliott: Pardon?

Mr Skarica: Do you know Andrew Graham? He's the president of the Ontario Secondary School Students' Association. Contrary to what's been said, I did listen to your presentation. You said students have been locked out of the process. I was in charge of the secondary school reform and we met with him on behalf of the OSSSA and other student groups. You will find that a number of submissions made by students such as yourself will be present in the report, so I dispute the fact that you have been locked out of the process, because I can assure you, you haven't been.

Ms Latha-Elliott: I guess I just don't consider consultation with an organization that receives money from the Ministry of Education to be adequate consultation.

Mr Skarica: I might add as well that I've gone to a number of classes and gone into the classrooms and seen what's happened day to day. I've done that in many classes on many occasions.

Interruption.

The Acting Chair: I ask people who are here, please don't interrupt.

Mrs McLeod: I can assure you that there has been no student consultation on Bill 104, even if there has been on secondary school curriculum, because there has been no consultation on Bill 104 outside of these hearings. You are the second student who's appeared before us at these hearings.

We have asked the question as to what will happen to student representation on school boards under the newly amalgamated boards. We don't have an answer to that question yet, but it seems quite apparent that you will continue to be shut out as students because there won't be room for student representatives on the mega-boards. That is a continuing concern.

We're looking forward to hearing the results of the student referendum, which I respect as being a student initiative and will have great validity and should have some impact because of that. I'm also driving Hansard crazy once again.

If there is time, I'd be very interested in knowing your views, because one of the out-of-classroom expenditures that may be subject to some cuts, based on the toolkits Mr Snobelen has tried to present in the past, is prep time, as to whether you see that as having an effect on your classroom education.

Ms Latha-Elliott: I guess I consider the elimination or cut to prep time as being very much cutting the access students have to their teachers, because one of the things teachers always do is make that preparation time they have also a time when students can come and have an opportunity to speak to them. So it's not always a time when teachers are, as they've been accused, taking their coffee breaks or whatever. In fact, I would even wonder whether they have time to prepare their lessons because they're so busy talking to us all the time and trying to help us. I guess I worry a lot about that because I don't think they can really prepare adequately if they don't have that time.

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Mr Martin: I want to thank you for coming tonight too, and I think it's really important that we hear from people like yourself, particularly people who have obviously done so much work to hear from your colleagues out there.

I've got four kids in the system. They're much younger than you are and are actually doing fine. I'm concerned that they continue to do okay. I have to tell you, from time to time when I hear the government tell me that the product we're producing, the student that we're graduating is mediocre or inferior somehow to other systems and other places, I wonder and I worry.

You're there and you will graduate in the not-too-distant future, I'm sure. What's your sense of the system as it now exists and the student that it's producing? Are they a mediocre or an inferior product, or is it your sense that what we're producing in Ontario will compete out there in the world in a way that will see us do as well as anybody else? How do you feel when the government says you're mediocre or inferior?

Ms Latha-Elliott: Apart from feeling personally insulted, because I am probably going to graduate soon, I think our system does a really good job at producing very well-rounded students. I worry about the back-to-basics movement because I don't think it prepares students for the world that lies ahead.

We hear a lot about the world that lies ahead and how complicated it is and the challenges that young people will face. I think with the kinds of things that are proposed not only in Bill 104 but in the secondary school reform package etc, we're really regressing quite drastically and I don't think we will be able to produce students who are able to think for themselves. My sense of the world out there is that you need to be able to think for yourself in order to survive, and all of the things that are considered to be out-of-classroom expenses are the things that have taught me to think for myself, like the anti-racist programs that I participated in, and the peer mentoring and the peer education, and the music and the library. All of those things that are now vulnerable to cuts have taught me to be analytical and critical. I think that will jeopardize our students.

The Acting Chair: Ms Latha-Elliott, thank you kindly for being with us here. I appreciate it.

DEBORAH WHEELER

The Acting Chair: Ms Deborah Wheeler is next. Thank you for joining us this evening.

Ms Deborah Wheeler: If this presentation sounds very piecemeal, it's because I've had to put it together very hastily. I was called to speak to this committee barely 24 hours ago. I feel that these hearings can't be very fair because of their extremely limited time and the lack of advance notice as to booking appointments. Now that I've registered my misgivings about the process, let me continue.

I have not come here today with facts and figures. I do not know enough about the financial aspects of education, although I certainly question the government's statistics regarding how much money is spent by school boards. The conflicting information the public is getting from the province and the school boards leaves a lot of room for doubt as to who is being more truthful with the people of Ontario.

I have come to speak from an East York perspective. I am a mother of three children in the East York public school system. My sons range from junior kindergarten to high school age. I have done volunteer work in one Toronto school and three East York schools. I have been particularly impressed with the East York system, which I find friendly, responsive and accountable.

As you may have heard before, East York has a small-town feeling in the midst of a big city. I find this carries over to the board of education. I often meet principals, teachers, caretakers, teaching assistants and trustees at a variety of East York functions, from political or school board meetings to events such as baseball, soccer and swimming lessons, or I even meet them in their unofficial roles of parents going to their own kids' Meet the Teacher Night.

I feel that over the years our families have got to know one another to a certain extent. I feel they know my family's needs and we can call on any one of them if need be. I also trust them. That is so very important in our society today. How could they hold their heads up at the baseball park or the local skating rink if they've been lying to the people they represent or if they haven't been accountable and fiscally responsible?

Each board in Metro has different priorities and distinct needs. Here in East York our student population has increased by 35.6% over the last 10 years. At the same time, we have endured massive cutbacks. How much more can we take and also keep quality education?

I cannot believe that a system which would have fewer school boards, fewer trustees, a system where one school board would be responsible for more than 300,000 pupils, could possibly be more accountable. Where is the logic in that?

Having had one child in a primary alternative school, the premise of such being active parent involvement in the classroom, I'm certainly an advocate for parental involvement. I've been very pleased to see an increasing demand for parental input coming from the Metro boards of education.

I myself have always done what I could to assist in the educating of my three children in whatever capacity I was able to, from helping kids in the classroom with reading, for instance, to driving on school trips, safe arrival, attending school meetings. But what I see in this bill is the provincial government trying to get free labour from dedicated and concerned parents instead of paying educated, trained and knowledgeable professionals, who are the appropriate people for the job. Even if this temporarily saved money, I believe the cost in chaos and disorganization would pretty quickly lead to much greater costs for our children and society in general.

One of my sons attends George Webster Public School. It is a school which has many demands made of it. We have a school population of over 600 students. Many of these children are recent immigrants to Canada. They and their parents do not speak English yet. Some have come from war-torn lands. Recently when I was walking down the hall of the school, I was concerned to see a little girl in the corridor crying. The teacher explained that the child recently came from a refugee camp and was having trouble with her peers because she was stealing from them. That little girl not only needed English-as-a-second-language classes but psychological help as well as the attention of some caring adults in her new life here in Canada.

We also have a high transient population of students whose families often live in very unappealing places. Many of these children come to school hungry or inadequately clothed. Some suffer from family violence. Judging from the number of fights in the playground that I see at recesses and the hostility and vulgarity of both the kids and their parents, I can tell you we must keep our level of special services to address the needs of these families. There should be more money available to the school systems in Metro, not less. Are you at the least going to guarantee present funding levels?

Some people malign teachers for having it too easy. They say they're paid too much, they have too many holidays. In my experience in East York, the teachers and other support staff, including principals, give much more of their time than that which they are actually paid for. Even with existing cutbacks, in a time when more and more is being demanded of them, they still take the time to address our personal concerns regarding our children.

Board employees, in my estimation, go above and beyond the call of duty in their services to parents, the community and last, but most importantly, to the students. But how far can we push them? These are not fictional superheroes. They are flesh and blood humans with their own lives, children and responsibilities. How dare we, the public, and you, the provincial government, expect them to do a superhuman job without the necessary financial supports?

We cannot turn the clock back. Society is very different now. Cultural norms and expectations have changed. We no longer have children who are seen and not heard. Difficult as this often is for parents and educators alike, we feel that the children are benefitting from being able to be contributing members of society.

Being the mother of three living in a rather small house, I cannot even imagine how a teacher could adequately meet the needs of, say, 40 students in a fairly small classroom or in an even smaller portable. We have a more hands-on approach to learning these days. There wouldn't even be room to move in such a crowded setting, let alone everyone having a turn at getting their hands on a project. How would teachers ever have sufficient time to deal with each individual child's academic and emotional needs and to discuss those needs with the potential of 80 parents at parent-teacher nights?

As a volunteer, I am very committed to following through on what I have taken on, but if my children were sick or something important came up, I certainly would put aside my volunteer commitments if necessary. A school trustee needs to be paid as a sign from the community of the value we attach to the position and, furthermore, as an indication that our kids can't come second. Their needs are a priority for all those involved in their education.

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I believe the East York trustees perform an essential task, and in my experience they have always been available, day or night, to talk with and to deal with problems. I have seen them at meetings at all hours and cannot believe they could actually be working part-time even though they earn only a part-time salary in East York.

To offer the new trustees, who will have around 100,000 constituents to represent, an honorarium of up to $5,000 must be a joke. Who could give as much time as is required for only $5,000 per year? Obviously, the candidate would have to have a separate full-time job. How would they juggle the needs of students and parents with the responsibilities due to their real employer? Whose needs would be met first? You can bet it would have to be the job which puts bread on their tables. This, quite simply, cannot be an unpaid position. Our children are too important to us and to the future of our country.

I am very concerned about the outsourcing of non-instructional services such as caretakers, secretaries, lunch supervisors and possibly even educational assistants. I think we all know that children find change very difficult to handle. Their worlds often seem confusing and mystifying to them. Their biggest needs are for security, routines and familiarity with structure and the people around them. In my experience with the school system, even if some teachers come and go, the support staff in the school usually remains the same over many years.

As we've read recently in the newspapers, there have been concerns over strangers in the schools. These situations could potentially become much more frequent in the future due to the hiring of contract workers. The support staff is very often drawn from the community, so they have more than an interest in earning a living and also care very much about the standards of the community in which they live. They are aware of any social problems or circumstances which exist. They are familiar with individual needs of the pupils. They have a vested interest in maintaining a safe, comfortable environment in which our kids can grow up in.

At our local grocery store, for example, my children often see one of George Webster's kindergarten teachers. Mrs Traynor is an institution of sorts herself because she not only has worked at the school for 12 years but she lives three blocks from the school. I truly believe that familiarity between school life and home life provides children with a level of comfort which assists their learning abilities at school. I would not feel that our children would as safe and well cared for if any of these services were contracted out to strangers who are not familiar with the needs of the children and the community.

I am fortunate to have had a first-born son who is now almost 16 who has never presented difficulties within the school system. He's one of the easy ones. He's done well at school, getting along with both peers and teachers, and he hasn't needed any special services such as remedial help, English-as-a-second-language classes, a social worker, French immersion, gifted classes -- to my regret -- or learning disabled classes, to my relief. But there are many other families who desperately need some of the aforementioned services, and we all deserve them. This is a public school system which has to meet all the needs of Ontario residents, regardless of their backgrounds and financial abilities.

To conclude, a unified Metro school board will become the fifth largest board in North America. How then will we be able to ascertain the needs of and meet various community standards? If this bill was about taking the best qualities of each of the boards and amalgamating them into one superior, manageable and yet humane board, I might as a parent feel I could endorse some of your recommendations. But I believe your real intentions are to bring our school system down to the lowest common denominator regarding costs, which cannot possibly meet individual needs.

These are such massive changes affecting so many lives. Let's make sure we don't waste any public money by rushing into something which appears to have no proof of being manageable and financially sound.

This government is giving itself, with the implementation of Bills 103 and 104, too much power. Control and power need to be spread out among many in a democracy to avoid corruption. I believe that those professional educators, who are trained and with much expertise in their field, are the best ones to make decisions affecting changes to the system and for the job of educating our children.

By the establishment of the Education Improvement Commission, you are making existing school boards, principals, teachers, trustees and thereby many parents into the enemy. This is insulting, alienating, non-productive and totally defeats the purpose of what you say you're trying to do, which is to improve the education system. Ask for our help. There is a lot of wisdom out here which you could use.

The Acting Chair: Would you please wind up, Ms Wheeler.

Ms Wheeler: How can you assure us that bigger school boards will be better? Where's the proof that you will be improving the existing system? To paraphrase Mayor Barbara Hall, slow down, take the extra time to do it right. Change your implementation date, please.

The Acting Chair: Ms Wheeler, thank you very much.

MARTY CROWDER

The Acting Chair: I'd like to call Marty Crowder. Welcome to the committee.

Ms Marty Crowder: I would like to thank you for the opportunity to address this committee about Bill 104. I also want to tell you that I'm opposed to Bill 104. I debated with myself whether I should tell you this right away at the beginning, because I don't want you to stop listening. I thought I'd tell you that I'd put some really good stuff at the end, so it'll be worth your while to listen to the whole thing.

I'm speaking to you as an individual who has talked to many other parents about our concerns about what Bill 104 will mean to our children and their education. Right now we have locally elected school trustees, who in many cases reflect their constituencies. They are not just a bunch of suits; they are women and people of different cultures, sexual orientation and class backgrounds.

The school board in Toronto has been a leader in innovative programming for our students, and it has put money into these programs. How does the government plan to fund the education system in the future? Bill 104 takes away the local school board's ability to tax and administer its own budget. This will be handled by the provincial government through some unelected trustees, not only unelected but appointed by this government, this government which has been cutting services to the poor every chance it gets, it seems.

According to recent reports on the CBC, children are poorer than ever. This government has cut welfare payments, it has cut funding to social housing, it has cut services to the poor and closed beds in hospitals and is planning to close the hospitals themselves. Am I supposed to trust that the funding to my child's school will not be cut?

As well, the idea of increasing the size of the Metro board to 300,000 students is mind-boggling in its -- I'd like to say "stupidity," but I don't want you to think that I think you're stupid. The separate school board is 100,000 students, and I've been told it is bordering on the unmanageable. You tell me how three times that size will work. What are the savings going to be? What are the costs to my child's education, and what are the benefits? Tell me. I want to know so that I can weigh the pros and cons myself. I don't want to take it on faith.

I am a parent of a child in grade 5 at our local school. At the school he attends, there are 27 languages spoken by the children attending and by their parents. There are already 30 children in his class. Fortunately he has an excellent teacher, who recognizes his intelligence and his abilities. He speaks English as a first language. He has had every advantage I have been able to provide. He comes from a home with books, music and athletic opportunities. If there are no extracurricular activities at the school, he will not suffer as badly as some children will. If there is not a library at the school or swimming or skating or choir or orchestra or ESL classes or programs for gay youth, he will survive without them. But I want him to have an enriched curriculum. Since he has to spend six and a half hours in school every day, I want him to be stimulated by different activities. I don't want him chained to a desk, as I was as a child.

Since I hear that the cleaning staff will be made redundant, I would hate to have us return to the days when a detention for unacceptable behaviour was served by cleaning windows or sweeping halls. He could even learn to hate school and, by extension, learning. Is that what we want to teach our children?

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There have already been cuts to his school. He hasn't always been in a class with 30 other students. There is an active parent council at his school. Before he attended this school, he went to an alternative school, and there was even more parent involvement there. I am not afraid of getting involved, but I don't want to waste my time either.

Last year there was to be a staffing cut at the school he attends. The parent council struck a committee to look at the best way to absorb the reduced staffing. The committee consisted of parents, teachers and the principal. This committee met many times over several months and came up with a plan they were happy with. This plan had to be submitted to the board. When it came time to submit it, the principal included a minority report of his own. The bureaucrats at the board of education decided to ignore the report from the committee and implemented the minority report of one, the report from the principal. This was done while we had supportive and elected school trustees.

As I said earlier, I don't like to waste my time. I've heard that one of the proposals is that there will be a parents' council that will advise the new school board trustees. Pardon me for being sceptical. What do we really expect to get from elected trustees who get paid $5,000 a year? Are they expected to live on that? Are they expected to find an extra five hours a week after they work full-time in order to eat and use that to run the largest school board in Canada?

Mrs McLeod: Thank you very much. You've expressed some of the frustration that you can feel as a member of a parent council in dealing with the board that exists and the frustration --

Ms Crowder: With the bureaucrats.

Mrs McLeod: -- with the bureaucrats, but with the elected board as part of that, I would assume. If that's not a correct interpretation of what you said, please correct me, because one of the things I'm wondering is what the frustration would be if elected boards ceased to exist altogether and whether you think there is really much chance that school boards can continue to exist when they're given a totally untenable situation, as the kind that is proposed under Bill 104.

Ms Crowder: I was almost afraid to put that anecdote in here, because I was afraid it would be understood as a criticism of the elected school board we have right now, and that is not what I intended. What I wanted to show there was that already we have problems with autocratic decision-making and we have an elected school board; when we lose that, we're going to lose all opportunity for participation, I'm afraid. I think what's being set up is a sham; that these appointees who are going to be running things are not going to listen to parent councils and they aren't going to listen to the people we elect. I'm not sure who would even run, who's going to be able to run. I can't think of people who can afford to give the time that will be required to do this for $5,000 a year.

Mr Martin: Thank you for coming and for making the points that you did. It seems to me that inherent in this bill is a slap at everybody in the system: trustees, teachers, parents and most particularly students. You described a situation where a student, losing all of those things that make school fun and enjoyable and attractive, gives up. We have a government today that's telling us and telling students that in fact they're mediocre, they're inferior, they're not quite what they should be, because the system is failing them. I'm wondering what impact that in itself will or could have on your son and on others in the system now as it exists and if in fact from that it's your experience with your son and his fellow students that they are in any way mediocre or inferior to any other systems you know of.

Ms Crowder: I certainly don't find the existing school system mediocre compared to what I was brought up in. My son does not seem to suffer from a fear or a lack of self-esteem. I'm not sure that that's all been provided by the school system, but he has had a series of excellent teachers over the years. Certainly the years he spent in the alternative school did a lot to help him to learn to learn, as opposed to learn the basics. He learned to love learning. He learned how to do it himself. I think that's what the important thing is. I think so often you want to teach kids the three Rs by a variety of rote methods; that used to be the way to do it. It's much more important, in my opinion, that a child learn to love learning and they can do it themselves when the need arises.

Mr Froese: Thank you very much for coming. All of us are concerned about our children and education, and sometimes on the government side we sit here and we think that critics of what we're proposing to do feel that we're not concerned about children. I have four children. They're in high school and elementary school. We are concerned.

We've heard from across the province and from my riding specifically in these hearings that the present school board system and the trustees are not making decisions the correct way as far as spending funds are concerned, that they're going to school board offices, and some have mentioned Taj Mahals and so on and so forth. They have been concerned over the years that the funds haven't been going to the classroom. The funds should be going to the student and the teacher.

In that light, if there are less school boards and less school board trustees, how will that affect that teacher and student in the classroom? I'd like to have an answer. How is that going to affect that relationship we're all talking about, that the funds should be going to the classroom? If we have a reduction in school boards and in trustees, could you explain to me how that's going to affect that relationship.

Ms Crowder: You're saying you're going to put all the money that's being saved by reducing the school boards directly into the classroom? That's what you're telling me? Is that what your plan is?

Mr Froese: I asked you how doing that is going to affect it. It's quite possible that could happen, yes.

Ms Crowder: I'm sorry that you don't understand what the school boards actually do. My understanding of what the school boards do is that they spend a fair bit of time looking at curricula, trying to figure out ways to improve the school system. That's what we elect them for. In Toronto, certainly one of the things I've been really impressed with is the support they've given to gay children in the schools, the gay-positive high schools. As a parent, and knowing what the statistics are of youth and gay youth suicide, I think that's been essential. We aren't going to get that from an individual school if there's no progressive leadership, and that's what I expect the school boards to provide.

The Acting Chair: Ms Crowder, thank you kindly for being with us this evening and sharing your views. We appreciate it.

DAVID CHECKLAND

The Acting Chair: Our final witness this evening is Mr David Checkland. Mr Checkland, welcome to the committee.

Mr David Checkland: I've lived in Toronto and Ontario for 12 years, and I'm a parent of two school-age children. I teach at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto. While I'm no great fan of some of the things that are happening in the current education system, I am here to oppose the passage of Bill 104.

I'd also like to say to those of you who are concerned with indications of quality that some of the typos in the document I've presented you are a result of having very little time to prepare this and the fact that I have the flu today, so I was overly reliant on my spellchecker. They're not, I hope, an indication of quality.

Bill 104 establishes a body, the Education Improvement Commission, that is not elected nor established as the result of extensive public consultation and discussion. It gives this body wide-ranging powers, including powers over duly elected officials. Such powers can be justified as an administrative necessity, as the government has suggested, and as a protection of the public interest against possible irresponsible misuse of public trust, but only, I put it to you, in a situation where there are three conditions met: (1) that this is a quite temporary expedient to reform; (2) that the substance of the reforms has been announced, including general principles that will guide the transitional body in its actions; and (3) that the content and implications of the reforms have been a matter of public discussion and have involved public consultation.

Condition (1) is not really met by this legislation, but you could argue perhaps that it is, but the other two are clearly not. Hence, however well-intentioned, and I'm unsure about that, the legislation amounts to undemocratic overkill. Why such sweeping powers? Why no possibility of legal challenges? Where is the accountability in the education system through these means?

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The conditions I have stated for justifying such extraordinary powers are not simply drawn from my personal preferences; in law, in democratic theory and in the traditions of this province and this country, they represent widely acknowledged essential elements of the democratic use of power, and they've been ignored.

Since I am sure the committee members have heard this before, I'd like to raise a related but perhaps less-remarked-upon issue, surprised as I am to find myself as the last witness. Maybe it's worth bringing this up. The government has spoken of the need to reduce the number of politicians in Ontario and to create more efficient and cost-effective public systems of governance. A good part of what is being contended in these hearings, and the Bill 103 hearings, I believe, is the question of the right place to locate and the right way to think about the value of efficiency.

Bill 104 neither includes nor is preceded by any substantive vision of what it would be to improve education in Ontario. This would require reflection on the multiple purposes of education, the rationale behind its public financing and some account of why certain purposes matter more than others. Against such a background, the idea of creating systems, which are really means to achieve certain ends, and the idea of making them efficient makes sense. But without such a background -- which is the current situation, or if it's not, it's not known to be the current situation, because we don't know what the background position is -- efficiency or cost-effectiveness has no real, clear meaning.

It begins to look like efficiency has become the goal rather than the means. The public, though not of one mind on this issue, is generally clear that it wants effective education, where students learn well and resources are not squandered. Concerns about overall cost arise only when that goal is perceived as not being well-achieved. When it comes to the ends of education, this government hasn't really proposed a guiding vision.

With respect to efficiency, if I might comment on several things in Bill 104, under the function of the Education Improvement Commission, they're explicitly instructed to examine savings with outsourcing, but they're not instructed to examine other alternatives for saving money or the wider effects of that outsourcing. That's a misplaced notion of efficiency. The idea that fewer school boards will necessarily be more efficient: It would be nice to have some studies that showed or gave some credence to what the optimal size of school boards ought to be. None of that has been offered to the public in support of this bill.

The extent to which the current school board system is effectively democratic or ensures quality education is in doubt. There are concerns. There's evidence both ways. I'm particularly concerned about a lot of the anecdotal evidence about reading skills. My son's experience in grades 1 and 2 has me concerned about how well and effectively reading is sometimes taught.

It seems to me that one of the issues that's not being addressed by Bill 104 and is not seriously discussed by the government, and ought to be, is the issue of class size. Probably the single biggest reform to the system you could make that would make a difference in quality of education is the reduction of class size, giving the teacher and the student more time together.

How will Bill 104, which is essentially wholly administrative in its outlook and doesn't mention any of the issues I've raised, lead to improvement? In effect, school board members will have their effective power reduced, because such power involves their time and, yes, therefore sometimes public subsidy of their time. Even if having fewer boards opens up in some sense the possibility for effective reforms at the level of learning -- and I'm not sure I see how it does, but perhaps it does -- denying those elected resources for the use of their time will guarantee that many opportunities for serious reform are lost.

Correspondingly, citizens will find it harder to have a voice which can effectively raise policy concerns. Hence, authority on most matters will devolve either to the provincial ministry or to non-elected staff of school boards, both of which would be unfortunate or undemocratic. It's an irony of contemporary Canadian politics that the very governments that are keen to decentralize the federal authorities are very unkeen about decentralizing their own authorities.

The final thing I'd like to mention is the issue of taxation reforms, which are not explicitly limited to Bill 104, especially the shifting of education off of the property tax and many other services on to the property tax. Education is essential for opportunity in today's world, and publicly financed, good education is probably the single most important thing, though far from the only thing, we can do to create, and not merely pay lip-service to, equality of opportunity for our children. The other aspects of tax reform will all operate against equality of opportunity, especially the offloading of services such as welfare on to the property tax. They will create drastic differences between jurisdictions in this province over the long run, incapacity to offer those services, and probably in terms of economic spinoff effects on those areas. The whole package needs to be rethought; it's not just a question of Bill 104 or Bill 103.

My advice to the government, through this committee, is that rather than view such rethinking and consultation as a defeat, as something that's being directly contended over, the government has a rare opportunity to show genuine leadership when it comes to the public good. The current debates aren't merely fighting between interest groups; rather, they're expressions of concern about the nature of the public good.

Democracy matters not simply because it's fair, but also because it can, at its best, involve many people, as they think about issues, in a process of not just contending for what they've already made up their minds they want but giving reasons and understanding the viewpoints of others and changing their own viewpoints. There is an opportunity to do that with this package. It raises such fundamental questions. That's the fundamental value at stake with Bill 104, and that's why its procedures are passing up an important opportunity. I urge you: Don't ignore the current dissent, don't bulldoze over it; listen, consult, tap into it, and better things can emerge.

The Acting Chair: Thank you very much. You have about a minute each.

Mr Skarica: You said there were some things in the education system that needed to be reformed or improved. Can you give us some examples?

Mr Checkland: As I say, I'm concerned about some of the methods of teaching reading. It's not just my son but some of his friends. I'm concerned about that, but I think class size plays a role in that. I'm concerned about some of the more local things. I'm a major opponent of the Toronto policy of all grades being split grades. I think that weakens instruction. I understand the theory. The theory is a good idea, but it doesn't translate into the real world. Those are two examples, but those are the kinds of things that I don't see Bill 104 seriously addressing.

Mrs McLeod: I appreciate your emphasis on the need for evidence. One of the things I'm hoping my colleagues on the committee will do is look at the five studies, which, to the best of my knowledge, are the only ones that have been done on amalgamation in the past four years. Just for the record, one of them said that ideally boards should be 5,000 to 55,000 students. One said that with anything larger than 6,000 students you should probably look at subdividing it. Two of them said there are no efficiencies to be found in amalgamation. One said that in fact it's the wrong priority because it uses the energy and resources inappropriately.

The other study I would like to see brought to bear is a statement that is made in the Ernst and Young report that was commissioned by the government in order to look at spending on education. The statement that was made in that report is that size is not relevant in determining what boards will spend more than others and that the ministry needs to get a greater understanding of what in fact drives education spending up and what's beyond a board's control, like special needs students.

My question is, do you not think it would be a good idea for the ministry to understand what makes school board costs go up before they decide what to cut?

Mr Checkland: What can one say but yes to that? But it's probably contentious; not all of that is completely clear-cut. But I hope those studies are taken seriously. Instead of dealing with cuts to the system, consider funding better studies to better evaluate what the outcomes are.

Mr Martin: I want to thank you for coming and making what I considered to be a very good presentation. We've heard a number of people over the course of today come before us, and whether they were for or against Bill 104, they were certainly in unison about wanting to improve education. I think that's what everybody wants to do. There isn't anybody here who doesn't want to do that. Overwhelmingly, the majority were of the opinion that Bill 104, as you have suggested, does not do that, does not deal with that question; it deals more with efficiency and cost-effectiveness. More than anything -- and I keep repeating this because I think it's really important that it be said -- the basis upon which this legislation is coming forward is a question of our system being mediocre or inferior or not doing the job. You're a professor at Ryerson. What's your feeling on that subject?

Mr Checkland: I don't really know. There are two things you have to keep in mind. Many people in the universities complain that students aren't as literate as they used to be. That might be true; I haven't taught long enough to know. I certainly haven't noticed a deterioration over the eight years I've been teaching full-time. But if it's true, it might be a function not so much of the school system but of broader social factors, one of which is that far more people go to post-secondary education than used to. So the people who are in post-secondary education might be different, but that doesn't reflect a general decrease in literacy in the wider culture.

That's why we need serious studies that can measure different kinds of qualitative outcomes rather than just anecdotal impressions. Certainly my anecdotal impression is that the system at worst is mediocre, and mediocre isn't bad.

The Acting Chair: Mr Checkland, let me thank you very much for coming here and sharing your views with us. We appreciate that very much.

Interruption.

The Acting Chair: Can I please ask for order or I'll ask you to leave the room. I'm sorry. The committee is not completed yet. Mrs McLeod, you had a question?

Mrs McLeod: I do, actually, and maybe it's appropriate. Before the committee reconvenes to have hearings on the road, there will be a summary of the last two days' hearings. I'm still reeling a bit from the reinterpretation of some of the evidence that's been given by the committee and the rather stark acknowledgement by the government that the reason we have Bill 104 is because of excess spending on the part of school trustees. I would therefore like to request, in the summation of the evidence before the committee, the percentage of presenters who have addressed the issue of overspending by trustees versus the percentage of presenters who have described the value of the trustees to them as parents or in other ways.

The Acting Chair: Is this a question to the research team?

Mrs McLeod: Yes, it is.

The Acting Chair: Do you need that in writing?

Mr Ted Glenn: I've got it.

Interjection: Mr Chair, I understand there was one person today who was not present to make a speech or to speak to the committee.

The Acting Chair: Yes, that's correct.

Interjection: I wonder if it's reasonable for me to ask to take that person's place right now.

The Acting Chair: The problem is that many other people asked.

Interjection: That's all right. It doesn't matter. You are here to listen to the people.

The Acting Chair: Yes, I agree.

Interjection: Okay, then, would you please do that? I am just taking the place of one person who is absent.

The Acting Chair: Please, you're out of order, ma'am. I'm going to give you the explanation of what it is. The committee sends out information -- actually it goes by way of the Legislature -- requesting people to apply to be heard.

Interjection: I did apply.

The Acting Chair: I know, I know. We can't accommodate all, because there are limited days given.

Interruption.

The Acting Chair: If you're not going to listen, then I'll adjourn the meeting right away. I'm sorry we can't hear you. We can't set the precedent. I'm very sorry. This committee is adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 2205.