Budget Update
June 1, 2006

Dear St. Paul's residents,

Last night at the Toronto District School Board, the Board decided to defer decision on our budget until the provincial education grants are announced (most likely within the next three weeks). This way, we will create a budget with full knowledge of what funds we will be receiving from Queen’s Park.

As the TDSB may face a potential $75 million deficit next year, the board will soon be considering several cuts to Toronto’s education system. They may include education assistants, Secondary school nutrition programs, pools, school closures, amongst others.

Currently, many school boards in Ontario are not adequately funded through the provincial funding formula. For example, this province-wide formula does not take into account rising utility rates, teacher salaries and does not support funding for swimming pool operating costs. It also does not support the costs of keeping small community schools open in Toronto.

As your trustee, I will only support cuts to all areas of redundancy and waste and support selected school consolidation with prior community consultation. I will not support school closures in our community, or cuts to the vital staff and programs that serve our students across our city. As well, I believe that pools are an important part of a child’s education as aquatic education supports healthy living and saves lives every year.

I also believe that we must provide support to our most vulnerable kids. I will continue to fight for our special needs programs. As well, Secondary school nutrition programs are a very low cost and important measure to ensure that every student has access to healthy food, no matter what their economic circumstance might be.

Discussions are currently taking place between the school board and the Ministry of Education and I will update you as we move forward towards finding a resolution to this challenge. For the past month, I’ve visited with almost every school in St. Paul’s to meet with our principals and students and have spoken with several school councils to hear what your priorities are.

I also met with the Ministry of Education last Friday and discussed several priorities including our schools’ concerns regarding the implementation of the class-size cap and strategy on how to get the school board and Ministry to work together on serving our parents and students without constantly going from budget crisis to budget crisis each year.

Please let me know your views, concerns or questions. I encourage you to make your voice heard!

On a much lighter note, I look forward to seeing many of you at our community’s school fairs and graduation ceremonies over the next several weeks

Josh Matlow

TDSB Trustee for St. Paul's

www.joshmatlow.ca