John Vanthof, the New Democrat for Timiskaming-Cochrane, says there’s been a noticeable change on how the Ford government is selling the debate on education funding.
Vanthof says when talk of cuts to education began, he says the Progressive Conservative line was no frontline workers would lose their jobs.
However, Vanthof says more recently that line has been changed to state no teachers will lose their jobs.
Vanthof wants to know what’s happened to the other frontline people other than the teachers.
He says teachers are not the only frontline workers that make up a school system.
“Schools need custodians, education assistants and secretaries,” he said.
“It’s a whole system. So if they say we’ll keep the teachers but yank the rest, that’s going to have the same effect in the schools and it’s not going to work”.
Vanthof says contrary to the Tory claim, the education system is not broken.
He acknowledges things can always be done better but he says making cuts doesn’t make something better, it makes it fail.
The New Democrat says an example of this increasing class sizes in high schools which result in fewer classrooms.
The NDP believe doing this will result in lost programs like tech classes.
