The miserable weather conditions including freezing rain did not put a damper on a planned teacher protest outside MPP Vic Fedeli’s constituency office late Thursday afternoon.
More than 150 supporters gathered on Main Street, in fact, the entire block of Main was blocked off to traffic due to the size of the protest.
The supporters were urging the government not to make cuts to education in the provincial budget. The protest was one of many that went on across the province on Thursday.
“We have seen cuts already and we are not thrilled about those and with a pending budget in the spring we want to get our message out that education is an investment and not an expense for the province,” said Parker Robinson, one of the event’s first speakers and is the vice president of the OSSTF District 4.
Robinson says they are concerned about increases in class size and potential cuts to programs that support at-risk youth.
“If class sizes go up you are having more students per educator in the classroom so there is less time for one on one assistance and supports, all the extra-curricular events that teachers do will be stretched to the limit with more work in the classroom and that is always difficult,” he said.
The rallies are taking place around the same time the budget consultation process is taking place. In fact, Fedeli is holding a budget meeting here in North Bay on Friday morning. Robinson says Fedeli was unable to meet with them on Thursday but has confirmed to meet with OSSTF officials in March.
Robinson says teachers fear that they are seeing parallels between Ford and the former Harris government.
“That’s why we are out here early today to get our message out that we do not want a return to Mike Harris’ agenda of cutting education, those funding cuts from that time. We are still not recovered from those cuts and we do not want Mr. Ford to go down that path,” said Robinson.
