News Clippings
January 1-11, 2016
Produced by the
Communications & Community Relations Department
Here’s why Dufferin County school buses are cancelled more often
Chris Halliday
Orangeville Banner | 4 hours ago
School buses were kept off Dufferin County roads for the first time this winter,
prompting the usual discontent from students attending unaffected schools.
“That time of year that I’m wishing I was a student in the Dufferin County
board,” @_chris76 posted on Twitter.
“I swear why is it only Dufferin County gets its buses cancelled,” tweeted
@jacobcarlos27. “Why can’t it be Dufferin Peel too?”
For all those people asking why buses in Dufferin County tend to be cancelled
more often than other regions, here is your answer.
When faced with snowy weather, Dufferin County’s hill-ridden, winding dirt side
roads north of Orangeville can get particularly slick.
The flatter features of Dufferin County make the area more susceptible to
blowing snow as well. County Road 124, which was closed from Shelburne to Grey Road 4 on Sunday night and reopened
Monday, is a good example of that.
RELATED: County Road 124 closed for first time this winter north of Shelburne
“It is those north-south flat roads where the wind comes blowing across the flat fields and they’ve got nothing protecting them
— no tree lines or anything — to stop that snow from coming across,” said Wendy Dobson, general manager for WellingtonDufferin Student Transportation Service (WDSTS). “You’re visibility ends up becoming nil to zero.”
On Monday (Jan. 11), WDSTS shut down all school taxis and buses in Dufferin for the first time this winter. As a result,
schools dependent on transportation such as East Garafraxa, Laurelwoods and Primrose public schools were closed for the
day.
According to Dobson, the decision to keep buses off the road was based on weather conditions this morning as well as a
second band of snow forecasted to arrive later this afternoon.
RELATED: Dufferin County told to prepare for up to 20 cm of snow
“We didn't want to be in a position where we couldn’t get the kids home as well,” she said. “You just don't want to put yourself
in that situation.”
Due to blowing snow, icy road conditions or extreme cold, school bus service was cancelled in Dufferin County five days last
winter. In 2013-14, that number was 12 days.
Only Old Man Winter knows if where those numbers will fall this winter. While difficult to predict, Dobson is optimistic it won't
be any higher this winter than last.
“We’re already ahead of the game,” she said. “We’d already closed three times by this time last year.”
Home-schooling appears to be moving away from educational outsiderdom
Jason Spencer
Mississauga News | Jan 08, 2016
Once on the outskirts of education, home-schooling seems to be steadily
picking up steam.
If the term makes you think of a feral child living in a Volkswagen camper van
with dreadlocked parents, you're way off because it appears that a variety of
parents are turning to it.
Esther Ng, a Mississauga mother who home-schools her two kids, ages 10
and 15, said the endeavour is a lifestyle change, but rewarding. She works as
a music teacher in the evenings and says home-schooling was a way to spend
time with her kids.
A member of the Mississauga Christian Homeschool Association (MCHA), one
of a small handful of local support groups in Peel, Ng has seen the number of
home-schoolers here anecdotally "skyrocket" in the past couple years.
Some say the increase in homeschooling could be partially related to the new
sex-ed curriculum. Here, a few parents and children take part in a homeschooling
session in Churchill Meadows Park last September to demonstrate opposition to
the revised curriculum.
There were currently about 100 home-school students tied to the volunteer-run MCHA, which started about 25 years ago.
She partially attributes the surge to parents who have told her they are unhappy with the incoming sex-ed curriculum.
"I think that's one big motivation that happened. I talked to other group leaders as well and they said the membership has
doubled or tripled," said Ng, adding that sex-ed is not the sole factor behind the apparent uptick.
"Some families decide to home-school because they find their kid doesn't belong (in a traditional school setting)," she said.
"For example, they are more advanced, or the parents find that the kids want to spend more time on a certain subject."
Munazza Mukri, administrator of the Toronto Muslim home-schoolers , a GTA-based support group with a large portion of
members in Mississauga and Brampton told
The News
through email that the organization has seen "incredible growth."
"(Home-schooling) matches the way we live and the opportunities that we have, of course, with Internet connection,
education can be delivered so much more easily now because of the access to technology," said Deani Van Pelt, director of
the Fraser Institute's Barbra Mitchell Centre for Improved Education.
Van Pelt added that this was a "big contrast" to the movement a few decades ago: "Those were very different sorts of parents
that were choosing home-schooling for different sorts of reasons that were much more ideologically based."
Though home-school regulations vary by province, Van Pelt said that in Ontario there's only a policy that parents should be
registering with the school board they live within.
However, if your kid has never been to school, you are not legally bound to register.
In the Peel District School Board, the number of home-schoolers registered as of last October was 764. Compared to the
151,423 other students, that number appears insignificant. However, it has climbed from the 530 home-schoolers registered
at that time the previous year and the 493 the year before.
There are currently 56 home-schoolers registered with the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board as of this month – 43
of which are at the elementary level.
That number drops off from the 82 home-schoolers recorded by the Catholic board in each of the two previous schools years.
According to the most recent numbers from the Ministry of Education, there were two million students (ages six to 18 years
old) registered in 2013-14 school year in Ontario – 5,600 were home-schooled.
Van Pelt authored a study released last summer by The Fraser Institute that found home-schooling grew on average by 7 per
cent each year from 2006-07 to 2011-12 in Ontario.
Entitled,
Home schooling in Canada: The Current Picture
, the research found that parents staying home to educate their own children in Canada has grown by 29 per cent in that sixyear period.
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January 11, 2016
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Joshua Ostroff
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Senior Editor, Huffington Post Canada
It's Time To Excommunicate Public Catholic Schools
Posted: 01/08/2016 1:12 pm EST
Updated: 01/08/2016 4:59 pm EST
The kids are back in class and the new year is upon us. In light of the shocking honesty from Catholic school trustees in Edmonton and
Toronto just before the break, it's perfect timing to make a resolution to achieve equality (and fiscal responsibility) by finally ending our
publicly funded separate school system.
Last month, the Edmonton Catholic School Board caused an uproar over the inclusion of the word "unjust" beside "discrimination" in the
second reading of a new transgender policy after a seven-year-old trans girl was initially banned from using the girls' bathroom. (The final
deadline for the policy, which requires a third reading, is March 31.)
ECSB Trustee Cindy Olsen actually argued that "just discrimination" was, like, totally cool: "If we had a teacher who was teaching religion
and wasn't Catholic in a Catholic school, is that discrimination? Or is that unjust discrimination? Because how can a non-Catholic teacher
teach religion?"
“
"Somehow in three provinces it's still considered kosher that one religious
group gets tax-funded schooling but not Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhist,
Hindus, etc. It's the dictionary definition of privilege."
The answer is, of course, the same way that a Catholic teacher could teach science. (Also, denying a job to someone based on their religious
beliefs does sound unjust, especially since this means a huge slice of government employment is now reserved for just one group.)
But that seems like an obfuscation of what their real concern is -- one critic, University of Alberta's Dr. Kristopher Wells, described the
language as "cloak and dagger" -- because the bigger issue at hand is the Catholic Church's view on LGBT issues and the fact that their
schools in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario are still paid from the public purse.
As another Edmonton Catholic school board trustee, Larry Kowalczyk, made clear in a CBC News interview back in September on
transgender students: "My stand is with that of the church. God has not made a mistake in the gender of me, or you, or anyone else."
Then there's Angela Kennedy, the recently acclaimed chair of the Toronto Catholic District School Board, who said in the announcement
press release that the school board "must stand up for what we believe in."
This was how she responded to a CBC Metro Morning interview question about gay-straight alliance clubs, which Catholic schools are no
longer legally allowed to ban.
Matt Galloway: "You have said in past that you have opposed gay-straight alliances. Do you think they belong in Catholic schools?"
Kennedy: "I think that we have supportive programs for students and I think students need to have these supportive clubs."
Galloway: "Does that include a gay-straight alliance?"
Kennedy: "We have different clubs in all of our schools and our secondary school students benefit from them. We have a mental health
strategy."
A MENTAL HEALTH STRATEGY?!?
Now, having grown up on the West Coast, where all religious schools are private schools, I cannot fathom why public funding is even still on
the table anywhere in Canada.
When the right of a tax-funded separate Catholic school system was put into the constitution back in 1867, it was a way of protecting the
religious, cultural and language rights of the minority French (who were predominantly Catholic) from the majority English (who were
predominantly Protestant) at a time when all schooling was church-run.
We now live in a multicultural country based on equality and yet somehow in three provinces it's still considered kosher that one religious
group gets tax-funded schooling but not Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhist, Hindus, etc. It's the dictionary definition of privilege. (Quebec,
B.C., Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan do offer partial funding for any private school, including religious ones, that meet specific
criteria, which is a whole other issue.)
The United Nations Human Rights Committee actually called us out on this a decade ago for failing to "adopt steps to eliminate
discrimination on the basis of religion in the funding of schools in Ontario."
When Ontario premier Kathleen Wynn ran for reelection in 2014, she was asked in a debate about merging the school boards because "it's
one of those ways to be more efficient and to save those tax dollars and make sure those dollars get to our children."
Her response, no doubt influenced by a tight election and a powerful Catholic voting bloc, was to dismiss the issue as a "distraction."
"If we were creating a school system today in Ontario, we'd have a different discussion," she added. "But we're not. We have a school system
that exists and it works and that's the school system that we'll support."
But tradition is a terrible reason to maintain a Catholic school system or any outdated legislation. After all, that was the argument against
same-sex marriage that would have made it impossible for Wynne to marry her wife.
Not to mention this tradition has been upended repeatedly, beginning back in 1890. Manitoba was the first province to do away with the
separate Catholic school system, sparking a national crisis dubbed the Manitoba Schools Question. According to Canada's History
magazine, this legislation meant that "not only would Catholic schools no longer receive public funding, but parents choosing a Catholic
education for their children would still have to pay taxes to the public system."
(Unfortunately, this did not apply to federally funded, Catholic Church-run residential schools, hence the current anger in Winnipeg over
plans for a private Catholic school in Winnipeg's heavily indigenous North End. Activists are arguing -- and Education Minister James Allum
agrees that "those concerns are genuine" -- that in the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission revelations about residential
schools, "the Catholic Church has caused us enough damage. It is time for this to stop.")
B.C., New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and P.E.I. have never had a separate school system and they function just fine. But it turned out to be just
as easy for Quebec and Newfoundland to get constitutional amendments to end their own separate school systems in the late '90s. Quebec
simply switched from Catholic and Protestant school systems to French and English ones while Newfoundland created a single system
following a provincial referendum.
“
"Residents of Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan shouldn't be forced to pay
for a Catholic school system that doesn't ground education in the fundamental
separation of church and state."
The status quo can be changed, and based on the behaviour of the Catholic School boards and trustees, enough is enough. A push for a single
public school system came up in 2012 in Ontario, when they fought Bill-13 (the Accepting Schools Act) because of its legal guarantee for
students to start gay-straight alliance clubs in Catholic schools.
"It mocks religious freedom and disrespects parental rights," wrote the Catholic Register at the time. "It undermines the authority of elected
trustees and school principals by giving veto power to children and teens with respect to some after-school clubs. It awards special status to
certain types of bullying rather than uniformly attacking bullying in all its forms."
And then it reared its head again during last year's uproar over the new sex-ed curriculum. Though the Toronto Catholic District School
Board ultimately rejected a call to delay implementation, they were asked to do so by now-chair Angela "mental health strategy" Kennedy.
Described by the Toronto Star as an "outspoken" sex-ed critic, she released a statement at the time that "substantial parts of the curriculum
contradict Catholic teachings" and "Catholic schools shouldn't be forced to teach a program that doesn't ground the expression of sexuality
in love and marriage."
By the same token, residents of Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan shouldn't be forced to pay for a Catholic school system that doesn't
ground education in the fundamental separation of church and state.
A Forum research poll from last summer found that 51 per cent of respondents want to move to a one-school system: "We have tracked this
issue for several years, and opposition to funding is always at about one half, while support is nearer one third. If it were ever put to a public
referendum, Catholic school funding would lose, fair and square."
And how much funding are we talking? In Ontario, for example, it's about $7 billion while in Calgary the Catholic school board gets $470
million to the public school board's $1.1 billion.
This brings us to the money argument. The Toronto Star reported in 2012 that merging Catholic and public systems would save almost $1
billion via "cuts to administration, fewer empty classrooms, savings on busing and what it called 'economies of scale.'"
Currently both the public and Catholic school boards in Toronto are running $16-million deficits, as well as servicing debts, which means we
are not making the best fiscal decisions to ensure our children can the education they deserve.
Now, anyone can attend any private, faith-based school they wish, or home-school for that matter, because it's a free country. However, they
should pay for it, not have it subsidized by the public. If they choose to take advantage of a school system funded by people of all -- and no -faiths, then they must accept an equality-rooted and evidence-based education.
It's time to defund and merge the remaining separate Catholic school systems in Canada because it's inequitable, discriminatory and, to
update our prime minister's famed catchphrase, because it's 2016.
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Separate Schools
Students may be suspended over vaccines
| Jan 07, 2016
TORONTO — Thousands of Ontario students face suspensions from school
because they haven't provided updated immunization records, but public health officials can't say exactly how many young
people across the province are affected.
The 36 local public health units in Ontario are required to maintain immunization records for school pupils, and can ask
boards to issue suspension warnings to parents in an effort to get them to make sure their children's vaccines are up to date.
School boards in Toronto, Ottawa, North Bay, Hamilton, Brampton and other communities have either sent warnings to
parents about possible suspensions if updated immunization records were not provided, or moved with the local health unit to
suspend students.
Toronto Public Health says the Toronto District School Board suspended 3,947 high school students in 2012-13 and 6,626
elementary students in 2013-14 for not having updated immunization records. About 1,800 students at schools in Ottawa
have been suspended since mid-December for the same reason.
Public Health Ontario, an agency set up by the Liberals in 2007 to, among other things, monitor the percentage of Ontarians
who receive vaccines, said it does not collect the student immunization records from local public health units.
"There is no one central place where all that information is available," said agency spokeswoman Janet Wong.
The Ministry of Health said a five-year renewal plan for its immunization program released last month will look at ways to
improve public reporting of student immunization rates.
"Ontario will be proposing changes to the Immunization of School Pupils Act that, if passed, would include stronger
requirements for school vaccine exemptions, as well as look at ways to improve public reporting on local vaccine coverage
rates," said Shae Greenfield, press secretary to Health Minister Eric Hoskins.
Often the vaccines are up to date but not the actual immunization records because some boards update the data immediately
following school-based clinics, while others wait until the end of the school year to file it with the public health unit.
Ontario's auditor general criticized the government's lack of information on its vaccine programs in her 2014 annual report,
saying the data are often far out of date depending on when schools, and parents, report the vaccinations.
The New Democrats said there is already a growing problem with some parents disputing the validity of vaccines who don't
want to have their kids immunized, and warned that not having an accurate way to track vaccination rates will add fuel to their
arguments.
"This is a really bad situation made worse by the government's inability to bring in an electronic health records system," said
NDP health critic France Gelinas. "That $1 billion wasted on eHealth would have counted every kid with or without an
immunization record and gold plated it on the front of every health unit and every school."
Every time a student gets a vaccine there should be an electronic record sent to the local public health unit instead of giving
them a piece of paper, which often gets lost before it's turned in or is misread as someone attempts to manually upload the
data, added Gelinas.
"We have increasing members of our population who are losing faith in vaccinations, and when the system doesn't work, they
lose faith in the whole thing," she said.
Public Health Ontario's report for the 2012-13 school year found the number of seven-year-olds granted an exemption
because of religious or conscientious objections ranged from 1.3 per cent for mumps and rubella to two per cent for the polio
vaccine.
"Although the overall proportion of students registering exemptions at the provincial level is relatively low, it obscures the
geographic clustering of exemptions that is well recognized," said the report.
It also found immunization coverage rates varied greatly by vaccine and by age groups, and suggested some communities
and students may be at increased risk of certain vaccine-preventable diseases.
Follow @CPnewsboy on Twitter
By Keith Leslie, The Canadian Press
Is it time for your little one to go to kindergarten?
Mississauga News | Jan 07, 2016
Kindergarten registration kicks off this month in the Dufferin-Peel Catholic
District School Board.
Parents and guardians looking to sign up their children (at least age 4 by end of year) can do so at all of Peel's Catholic
elementary schools starting on Jan. 25 from 7 to 9 p.m. Registration also runs all day Jan. 27 to 29 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Call 905-890-0708 , ext. 24440 if unsure which is your child's home school.
In case of inclement weather, a snow date is scheduled for Jan. 26 from 7 to 9 p.m.
Required documentation to register includes the child's birth certificate or passport, a baptismal certificate and an updated
immunization record.
As well, parents must present two items that prove home address: property tax or utility bill, real estate documents or forms
issued by the Canadian government.
Proof of English Separate School Support is also required, but can also be done by filling out a form while registering.
Visit dpcdsb.org or call 905-890-1221
for more information.
Meanwhile, kindergarten registration for the 2016-17 school year is already underway in the Peel District School Board.
In order to find out which school your child would attend, parents and guardians can all 905-890-1010 , ext. 2212.
Newcomers are invited to register through the Peel board's We Welcome the World Centre by calling 905-366-8791 .
A list of required documentation and additional information can be found at peelschools.org .
Retiring Catholic education director believes in power of teaching
Jason Spencer
Mississauga News | Dec 26, 2015
It's the Monday morning before Christmas and John Kostoff is not wearing his
usual work attire.
The suit and tie are absent while he worked on moving from his director of
education office at the Catholic Education Centre to make room for new tenant
Marianne Mazzorato, who succeeds him next month.
Kostoff began his career in the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board as
a Grade 5 teacher at St. John XXIII Catholic School nearly four decades ago.
He admits he wasn't a good student growing up until he experienced the
transformative power of education.
"I saw the power of a good teacher in terms of impacting people's lives and
making a difference not just in school, but for the rest of your life by teaching
you certain skills and attitudes," Kostoff, who served as associate director of
Dufferin-Peel prior to becoming education director.
John Kostoff, education director for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School
Board, looks back on his 38-year career with the Catholic board fondly. After nine
years as education director, he retires next month.
Kostoff was one of about 45 teachers hired by the board when he started out.
"When I began teaching we got a class list and manuals for those subjects and you felt very much like you were on your
own," he recalled.
He taught for his first decade with the board, including a stint at Holy Name of Mary Secondary School. He then became
Dufferin-Peel's coordinator for religion.
Itching to bring about change for the better, he made the leap to the administrative side after just five years as coordinator.
However, no matter what capacity he's worked in, Kostoff views his role as an extension of teaching.
Following his passion has come with difficulty, though. When Kostoff started out as education director in 2007, Dufferin-Peel
was under provincial supervision because they would not make additional cuts requested by the government, due to funding
formula issues.
Dealing with a deficit that was upwards of $10 million, he managed to get the board out of supervision in a year and the
government at the time altered the formula.
"New directions and new challenges," come with the territory, and Kostoff's seen his fair share leading up to Premier
Kathleen Wynne.
He said accommodating growth in the board has been an ongoing challenge. In fact, Mississauga may soon see the closure
of three Catholic elementary schools as dwindling enrolment in the East Credit area has given way to a Pupil Accommodation
Review.
Aside from putting pressure on boards to act on low headcount, the current provincial government has also brought about
changes to the curriculum and the labour negotiation process.
While the Catholic board's neighbour, the Peel District School Board, attracted the lion's share of media attention for updates
to the sex-ed curriculum, Kostoff said there was also some backlash on his side of Matheson Boulevard.
While there were delegations from upset parents, and some students were withdrawn from school, Kostoff said the issue is
being dealt with centrally through the Institute of Catholic Education.
"It was a different approach," he said of the development of documents that support the ministry's guidelines, while adhering
to their faith. "We are in the process of sort of dealing with that."
With some labour groups still hashing out contracts locally, Kostoff called the new two-tier bargaining process a "work in
progress."
"The hard part is to get the local voice at the provincial table," he said.
With his contract coming to an end, Kostoff felt it was the opportune time to depart. Two days after leaving, he'll begin new
chapter as executive director of the Ontario English Catholic Supervisory Officers' Association.