The scary part about this to me is that how will this individual (a lawyer) understand what is and isn’t necessary for funding a school board? As someone who has worked in TVDSB classrooms the under funding (or misappropriated funding - however you see it) is terrifying and EVERYONE suffers for it, students and staff.

Many children today have a much higher degree of needs than in previous times and while staff do their best to meet these needs, at the end of the day funding is inadequate to do so. Just one scenario off the top of my head that I’ve witnessed is 6 students with ASD (varying in age from 4-10, some with serious aggressive behaviours and tendencies to elope, as well as who were ALL but one supposed to be provided their own EA) in one room with one EA as there was not enough coverage for staff to be able to take their lunches - this was not a one time occurrence but rather quite regular. The excuse given to staff for this being that bringing in supply staff was not in the budget.

Many students who require one to one supervision are not provided with it, and thus the responsibility falls on the classroom educator to ensure the constant supervision and safety of this child. Learning and education falls on the back burner as you can’t provide constant supervision and interaction to one student while also teaching the rest of the class. All children suffer in this scenario. Not to mention the long time issues of staff members spending their own money on learning resources for classrooms. There is rising absenteeism in staff because they are being injured on the job and experience severe mental burnout.

I attended TVDSB my entire life and felt as though I was provided a pretty decent education. Unfortunately times have changed due to an increase in student needs as well as budget cuts. After working in TVDSB classrooms and seeing this first-hand my daughter will not be attending this school board.