There’s a collective rumble of discontent among high school students in Ontario when it comes to recently announced changes by the Ford Government to class sizes and teacher hires. Students at O’Gorman High School are preparing to make a stand about these cuts and raise awareness about the new threats to Ontario’s education sector.

On April 4th, students in Timmins, and across Ontario, are planning a massive student walk-out to protest the Ford Government’s cuts to education.

Patrick Boissonneau, a Grade 10 student at O’Gorman High, says he found out about the walkout through an Instagram post calling for students in Ontario to come together for the walkout.

“We all saw this,” he said, “and decided, well, we have to do something about it because it’s not right what the government’s doing. […] So, we’re all walking out, April 4th at 1:15.”

At the end of February, Ontario’s Education Ministry recommended a hiring freeze on teachers ahead of the provincial budget. The government is looking at cutting teacher’s jobs and making class sizes bigger.

The education ministry told school boards earlier this month to defer filling vacancies for retirements and other leaves for teachers and other staff. The cuts to teacher’s jobs is expected to lead to bigger class sizes.

“Usually in a classroom, we have, maybe about 22 kids average in one classroom,” said Patrick. “So they want to up that to, I guess, 28 or something. But, because, even just bringing that ratio up, you need bigger classes, that’s going to cut teacher’s jobs. And I’m pretty sure that’s a couple thousand for sure, teacher’s jobs, all over Ontario are going to get cut because they want to bump up the classroom.”

Teachers have warned that removing primary class size caps would make it hard to meet all students’ academic needs.

And that’s not the only reason students are protesting. More cuts to jobs will happen when the Ontario government makes online learning mandatory for students. More jobs will be cut if all students in the province are expected to learn online without a teacher.

“That might be beneficial to some students,” said Patrick, “but most students preferably want to have a teacher.”

Online courses takes time out of a student’s day on top of their other class work in school. Patrick says their education is on the line and they want to make sure they try to make a difference.

“We feel that we want to make our voices heard,” he said, “because we just feel that this is not right. Because this doesn’t just affect us. This affects the teachers at our school as well. And nothing’s really being done about it, in our opinion.”

Making a stand and having their young voices heard is important to the students who have so much to stand for.

“It’s important for youth to be heard nowadays too,” Patrick said, “because there’s a stigma online and in the community that youth are no good. They’re not important. Stuff like that. So we want to break the stigma there too and get our voices heard so that we can reach a grander audience.”

This implementation of the new education system is already in place and the students are hoping to revoke some of those changes. Patrick says it’s a step in the right direction to make students more aware of what their government is doing for their education.

“Students nowadays aren’t really aware of what’s going on in the political areas. How are we going to be much more aware with how that affects us? Because we’re just as affected by the provincial government than the adults, for example.”

Patrick, who is 16 now, says soon kids his age will be eligible to vote and that could change things.

“We have to be aware of this kind of stuff with the government so we can make informed choices about who we want for office.”

Any schools in the area that haven’t signed up for the Walk Out on April 4th can get more information here. 

Students will be peacefully protesting outside O’Gorman High School on George Ave. on April 4th at 1:15 PM. People are encouraged to post and re-post on social media and make this movement a strong presence online. Patrick encourages everyone to spread the word, as their future education might depend on it.

“Get the word out as much as you can so that we can hopefully make a change in the government system. So we can make more people aware of this.”

 

–With files from 680 News

Filed under: Local News