York school board to axe 93 teacher positions, here's how

Move comes in wake of provincial funding cuts

Yorkregion.com
June 12, 2019
Dina Al-Shibeeb

York Region District School Board has announced 159 courses will be eliminated or reduced at its 33 high schools amid cuts announced by the Tory government.

It also said the cuts spells out that 93 high school teaching positions will be axed through attrition, but there are no anticipated layoffs.

In an email exchange with Sandy Glassford, York Region’s president of District 16 Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, he told York Region Media on June 3 there would be “a decrease of approximately 90 secondary teachers.”

What’s the math in understanding how the decrease in funding will do that?

Glassford says the Grant for Student Needs at York Region was reduced by $40.7 million and the Learning Opportunities Grant was reduced by $12.7 million.

“These are the two lines which are primarily responsible for generating the bulk of staffing in school boards,” he explained.

However, “the Cost Adjustment and Teacher Qualifications and Experience Grant saw an increase of funding by $42 million,” but “this is where the attrition funds were placed.”

According the Ministry of Education, attrition protection usually refers to a proposed new temporary funding allocation to top-up school boards where the change in funded teachers exceeds the actual attrition and other voluntary leaves.

“The intention of these temporary funds is to ensure that teachers do not lose their job as boards move to an average staffing ratio of 22:1 to 28:1,” he said. “Once a board has reached the 28:1 ratio they will no longer be eligible to receive the attrition funding.”

So far, the Tory-led government has given boards across the province four years to reach the 28:1 ratio in a push to increase class sizes to reduce spending.

“In York we saw an overall increase of $1.7 million in the GSNs and an increase in enrollment of 748 students and a decrease of approximately 90 secondary teachers,” he said.

“The GSNs are not broken down into secondary and elementary, so the values represent money to be divided into both panels.”

On Wednesday, YRDSB announced it will eliminate and reduce up to 159 courses.

“Unfortunately there is nothing preventing schools from taking this action,” he said. “I would just hope that any school which has decided to do this would realize that this is not meeting the needs of all of our students and I would hope that when the government gets wind of schools having to make these drastic changes that they would realize that it is a direct response to removing teachers from schools.”

Glassford has been busy with protests with the latest being scheduled on June 7 outside Attorney General Caroline Mulroney’s office in Holland Landing.

The protest will include all York and Simcoe education groups, labour affiliates (CUPE etc), some NDP members and concerned citizens.

Despite the incessant protests and cars honking in show of support, “We have yet to have any (PC) politicians come out and speak with us at our rallies.”