School Magazine: Public Education is in Crisis. We Can’t Afford to Stay Silent

School Magazine

This article is originally written by Nigel Barriffe, Vice President of the Elementary Teachers of Toronto, for School Magazine.

Just last week, I had a public exchange with a colleague—we’ll call them Bob—who took issue with a political cartoon I shared based on a 2014 Ottawa Citizen article.

The image referenced Ontario’s Education Minister Paul Calandra’s past: allegations that he exploited his dying mother’s finances and threatened his sister. Bob argued that because the matter was settled out of court, it didn’t belong in conversations about public education today.

But today, that same Paul Calandra released a budget that does exactly what many of us feared: guts our public schools. This is a man who avoided accountability then and is avoiding responsibility now.