Using public data, The Trillium, along with several other analyses, found that provincial school board funding has declined over the Ford government’s time in office, when inflation is taken into account, exacerbating issues that were present even earlier.

The Fund Our Schools Coalition says the Ford government is to blame for the chronic underfunding in Ontario’s schools.

Join the Fund Our Schools Phone Zap on Tuesday, May 27, 2025 to call MPPs who have the power to change the funding formula! Details on how to join via Zoom will be shared closer to the event date.

Watch as Dan McClean, TDSB Trustee for Ward 2, speaks on the chronic underfunding of our public schools at a meeting in 2024 and remarks that these deficits are not a result of spending.

I received an email today from a fellow teacher—we’ll call them Bob—who was frustrated that their colleague had volunteered to organize a school music concert. They argued that this kind of “volunteer culture” is what ruins working conditions, because it creates pressure for others to do the same. According to Bob, teachers doing unpaid work is the reason other teachers suffer.

As Vice President of the largest teachers’ union in Canada, I have the privilege of speaking with educators every day. I visit their classrooms, walk through their schools, and hear first-hand about their struggles and frustrations. But I also hear something else—skepticism.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has done some research into education funding.  Their estimate is that compared to 2018-19, school boards have received $1,500 less per student. The result is billions of dollars lost to education in Ontario.

Schools are collapsing under the weight of underfunding, and the results are undeniable: children with Individual Education Plans  (IEPs) not receiving the support they need, growing class sizes, and staff being stretched to their limits. These are not isolated issues. They are the direct result of seven years of cuts under Doug Ford.

Living in Toronto as a teacher earning $50,000 a year is an impossible task. When rents are averaging $3,000 a month, how can we sustain the educators who build the next generation? And it’s not just education—across Ontario, finding a family doctor feels like winning the lottery. ERs are closing, buildings are crumbling, and the systems that should protect us are collapsing.

Parents and teachers say schools are underfunded and understaffed, kids are being “abandoned” in mainstream classrooms in the name of inclusion, and neither the TDSB nor the province will take responsibility.