Teachers promoting environmental biases in classrooms

October 2009

By Tim Ball
Senior Fellow
Frontier Centre for Public Policy

My grandson is five years old. After his second week in school, he asked his father what he was doing about global warming.

Think about that for a moment. Does anyone believe that a five year old can even understand the controversy surrounding the science of global warming, let along question what he is being told?

Rather than teaching my grandson the knowledge he will need to succeed academically – analytical skills and open mindedness, among others – his teacher is spending time indoctrinating him with her beliefs on global warming.

I am outraged. As Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, said, “Give me the child until he is seven and I will show you the man,” and classrooms today are definitely practicing what he preached.

Be proactive and rectify a dangerous situation

Our municipal officials have had a relatively easy go of it when it comes to fielding criticism from a disgruntled electorate. Sure, every member of council, Mayor Cliff Barwick included, fields calls and emails from upset residents on a weekly basis.
That is about to change Monday evening as former mayor Janet Golding turns up the heat as she stands before council to demand action on a matter no alderman has had the moxie to confront — unsafe crosswalks.
The Times-Journal headline two weeks ago today lays it on the line, “Two crosswalk lines … ‘mean nothing.’

Axe dangles over another St. Thomas school

The London-centered school board is ready to close another city school in 2011. Here’s the details from Kelly Pedro at the Free Press.

Senior administrators recommended tonight that area public board trustees close a St. Thomas elementary school.

After a so-called accommodation review committee report, staff are recommending Balaclava St. public school close and pupils there be folded into Edward Street public school, which will convert from a junior kindergarten to Grade 6 school to the Thames Valley District school board’s preferred junior kindergarten to Grade 8 model.

If approved, Balaclava would close in June 2011.

Staff are also recommending pupils who live north of Talbot St. and attend Scott St. public school – which is already slated to close – be transferred to Edward St., which will be renovated. Staff project that renovation would cost about $4.8 million and enrolment for 2011-12 is 349.

Locke’s public school would also be renovated to handle pupils from the Dalewood subdivision. Staff project that renovation would cost $4.1 million and enrolment for 2011-12 is 523.

Those recommendations, if approved, would take effect in September 2011.

After this ARC, all pupils in St. Thomas will be moved into the board’s preferred junior kindergarten to Grade 8 model in the next few years.

The public now has a chance to speak out about the senior administration’s recommendation before trustees vote on the issue Dec. 15.

Missing in action … one very much needed public school

It’s pass the buck time and the families of students returning Tuesday to Wellington Street Public School are fed up with the nonsense they have endured all summer.
 Russell Brownlee is one of those affected parents and his frustration fairly leaps out of the letter he forwarded to the Times-Journal this week.
 According to either the Thames Valley District School Board or the Southwestern Ontario Student Transportation Services,” writes Brownlee, “this wonderful school, which is still very much needed and will be occupied by over 200 students this coming Tuesday, no longer is being recognized as an institution of learning.”

John Wilson not one to idly stand by while schools close

It’s been almost seven years since John Wilson vowed to become more active in school board issues.
In December, 2002, in his capacity as Elgin county warden, Wilson nearly blew a gasket when London trustee Joyce Bennett was re-elected as chairman of the Thames Valley District School Board.
The move effectively ended an accepted practice whereby each chairman served a one-year term and the position alternated between a London trustee and a representative from either Elgin, Oxford or Middlesex county.
“We don’t intend to stand idly by and have our communities torn apart simply because of someone who doesn’t understand what’s going on within the communities,” Wilson told the Times-Journal at the time.

Rural schools unfairly targeted, parent finds

Small rural schools are being shuttered at a disproportionate rate around London, even though half-empty city schools remain open, say Middlesex County advocates for a coalition to fight rural school closings.

Karen Aranha of Glencoe said she crunched the Thames Valley District school board’s numbers and found most of its empty classroom spaces are in London, but most school closings are in Middlesex, Oxford and Elgin counties.
Full story

Times they are a-changing

From the St. Thomas Times-Journal

Tool-and-die training is on hiatus and educating the next generation of wind turbine technicians could soon be in place at Fanshawe College, St. Thomas campus.
Thanks to the economic downturn, the local campus has not only seen a spike in enrolment but they’ve also re-tooled some of the programs offered, and admission dates.
Dean Chris Fliesser estimates they’ve seen enrolment rise to 450 from 400 students — a 15 per cent increase — from last year.
“We’ve seen a tremendous amount of activity, which started last summer,” he said, adding that coincides with the launch of Ontario’s Second Career program to help laid off workers re-train.
To accommodate those on the hunt for career training, Fliesser said they’ve started admitting students mid-semester, rather than just in September or January.
“We’re providing opportunity so students can come in at different points in the year,” he said.
The personal support worker program, for example, has four entry points — September, October, January and March.
Fliesser added they’ve introduced an “intake” point for May 11, when two new gas technician and one welding program, among others, are offered.
Increased enrolment and the economic reality in our community has required some changes for Fanshawe-St. Thomas.
For instance, Fliesser said they’ve stopped taking students for the tool-and-die program, once the school’s marquee offering.
“There are a lot of people in that trade right now who are not working and there’s been less demand from a student perspective and employers,” he said, adding they’ll bring it back when demand picks up.
On the flip side, Fliesser said they’ve also got their eye on green energy technology, namely wind turbines. He noted a lot of students in the electronic technician program go on to work with wind turbines. Right now, Fanshawe covers about 70 per cent of the requisite wind turbine training.
“Depending on the employer, they may say, ‘that’s fine, that’s good enough.’ And will take them and train them the rest of the way.
For the others, we’re thinking… should we be offering a wind turbine post-graduate program?” he said. “Our philosophy is that we will put on any program where there is demand for those jobs and we can get enough of a cohort to offer it.”

The sun shines brightly on the Thames Valley District School Board

From the St. Thomas Times-Journal

The Thames Valley District School Board has added a whopping 115 new members to its Sunshine Club — the list of public sector employees earning more than $100,000 a year.

In all, 180 principals, administrative staff and teachers earned more than $100,000 in 2008, according to an annual filing required under Ontario’s so-called Sunshine Law.

That’s up from 65 the previous year and more than 100 of them are elementary school principals, including at least 17 from St. Thomas-Elgin.

“That (increase) would be because our elementary principals, as a group, this year, their salary grid placed them above $100,000 for the first time,” said Mike Sereda, executive superintendent of human resources.

He noted that all principals will be on that list in given time due to pay increases.

But, he noted the Sunshine list is out of date.

“It was created at a time when very few people had a salary of $100,000.”

For the second year in a row, former director of education Bill Bryce earned the highest salary at $266,721. Meanwhile, current education director Bill Tucker earned $186,850 plus $1,130 in taxable benefits, and Sereda himself was paid $159,746.