It seems the Minister of Education wants kids in this province to use their imagination when it comes to improvements and funding for their own schools.

The TDSB has been left far behind in this government’s recent budget. The largest school board in Canada is facing a deficit of $26.5 million for the upcoming year, and this government has no interest in helping them with capital funding.

Sensational Secord Elementary School in East York is in desperate need of the new build promised ages ago.

Parents are coming to me, wondering how their Premier is doubling the salaries of his staff and ballooning his office budget while their public schools are crumbling under the pressures of overstuffed classrooms, dilapidated infrastructure, and a complete lack of priorities by this government.

My question is, why is the TDSB getting shortchanged, and when can the Secord community expect their long-promised new school?

There are 7,200 residential units—

Currently, Secord is 200 students beyond capacity.

Speaker, when will this government put their money where their mouth is and actually get the shovels in the ground and build Secord’s new school?

This petition is from the Elementary Teachers of Toronto, and it’s asking the government to stop the cuts and invest in schools that our students deserve.

There’s been quite a bit of discussion about the number of cuts. The inflationary cut to our schools is $1,300 per student, per year, since this government took office, and that totals billions of dollars for school boards. This is the reason that almost every school board in this province is facing a funding shortfall this year.

This is not just a one-year thing. The TDSB mentions it faced a $63-million funding shortfall last year. There’s a $23-million funding shortfall this year. Every year, the TDSB trustees are asked to make cuts. They’re not provided with the funding just to continue the services that they offered the previous year, and that is on this government.

There’s also the government—the TDSB was instructed by the government to use the reserve funds to get through the pandemic to provide computers and other services that students needed to get through the pandemic. That reserve fund was never re-established by this government, so those cuts are also impacting our students. And the net impact is that our students do not get special education. They have larger class sizes. They do not get the health supports. We have an epidemic of mental health issues among young people these days, and they’re not getting the supports that they need.

So this group is asking the government to fix the education formula, to stop this year-after-year round of cuts, because our students deserve better.

I fully support this petition. I will pass it to page Armaan to take to the table.