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p12 weekender april 30 1994 diced and sliced butsthlproud in spite of government cutbacks in funding and a severe attack on its most valuable resource through the imposition of the social contract we still provide one of the best quality educations any where in the world com pared unfavorably to the japanese school system ontarios publicly funded system provides access for all while japanese stu dents must pass entrance exams even for preschool and kindergarten a july 1993 environics survey showed that par ents and taxpayers believe the provinces pro fessional teachers are making a valuable contri bution to society and that ontarios publicly funded education system is worth the investment we have every right to be proud but one has to wonder how much more the system can endure while continuing to pro vide this high quality of education which is recog nized around the world aleda oconnor debunk the myths and blow your own horn a special report to the reporter the magazine of the ontario english catholic teachers associ ation volume 19 number 3 february 1994 brian kirlin pffoup ols in dlvvtf educatoh a secretarys perspective we are entrusted with a most precious commodity the children your children our children school secretaries have a special gift of working through constant interruptions dealing with a multitude of personalities and conflicts and in general organizing and managing time the largest source of grief for cupe 1734 members occurred in 1992 when five working days were eliminated from our year to save on the budget many members felt that there was a slow deterioration of the caring attitude that our taxpayers deserve and will eventually notice when the infamous social contract arrived just over 100 members were affected by rae days the remaining 600 did not earn enough according to statscanada the low income cut off for a family in york region is 30460 again most of us make substantially less than that figure we are concerned parents and taxpayers just like the rest of you taking pride in what we do feeling the frustrations of government decisions strug gling to make ends meet and juggling a job and a family laura romanowsky students perspective at the beginning of the year there were 3 grade 7 classes now we have 2 our teacher had to leave and go to another school now our class is much larger the teacher is very busy when i have a problem i have to wait my turn to confer with the teacher sometimes i have to wait until the next day and by that time i have forgot ten what i needed they say my teacher had to go away because the number of teach ers were cut back lisa who sits next to me and needs help with her reading doesnt get to see her special reading teacher as often as she needs to last year she had spe cial help 3 times a week now she only comes once a week if she can lisa feels she is falling behind in her work and she is really quiet in class she doesnt raise her hand and she seems to be daydreaming a lot three other kids who are having trouble this year are george jason and tom they fool around all the time in class they tease each other and they sometimes fight the teacher is always at them to settle down george has a lot of family problems and he used to go to mr jones the guidance teacher but mr- jones is not available anymore and neither is the viceprincipal we used to be able to go down to the library and work on our projects and on the computers when we had free time now the library door is locked this year isnt as much fun as last year there seems to be no one to listen to the kids mom says i am not learning as much either joan suzanne elaine jane a teachers perspective the implementation of the social contract along with the staffing reduc tions made by the york region board of education in violation of the col lective agreement have affected all areas of daily operations at the school level our school staff decided last spring that our priorities would be to keep class sizes as small as possible and to try to avoid a large number of split classes in order to do this with the staff available some services had to be cut back teacherlibrarian time has been reduced by 50 per cent this means that there are times when students are not able to use the resources in the library to do research or to select reading materi als in order to try to keep the resource centre open and available to students the principal and viceprincipal have been covering as many periods as possible the teacherlibrarian has great difficul ty assisting staff with program planning and making teachers aware of the wide variety of resources that are available learning advantages are being lost due to time and personnel restraints guidance time has been reduced by 50 per cent this means that daily problems cannot be dealt with as effectively as in the past all of our small group coun selling programs have been cancelled these programs included social behavioural peer groups separation divorce remarrriage peer groups and bereavement peer groups the peer tutoring program and individual coun selling times have been seriously affected we believe that proactive preventionoriented programs save money in the long run but they need adequate staff at the same time cutbacks in community social services have made access to support and counselling pro grams very expensive and very limited viceprincipal administrative time has been reduced to 50 per cent she is a homeroom teacher for the other 50 per cent it is very difficult to fulfill either of these demanding roles as effectively as one would like to when one is being pulled in so many directions many staff members have been concerned about the reduction in time for psychological services the process of formally identifying students with special needs is very lengthy and the wait becomes even longer when test ing cannot be done because psycholo- gists are unavailable parents whose children are on waiting lists become very frustrated as their sons and daughters experi ence continuing difficulty and fall further behind their classmates at the same time teachers feel frustrat ed as they try to meet the diverse needs of the students in their class es all in all this has been a year of considerable difficulty and frustra tion the system continues to work as well as it does because teachers and administrators are dedicated to delivering the best possible service to students even in very trying cir- cumstances norma belfry poot tumjk rtmjb ill york region pride has been funded by the membership fees of the following york region organizations the ontario english catholic teachers association the ontario secondary school teachers federation the ontario public school teachers federa tion the elementary teachers federation the women teachers association the canadian union of public employees local 1734 and the elementary principalvice principals association lwf r t r jjlitjuvtliiiizi fflhhiftrftiirr