Mar1_07CutsToronto Board

Press Releases 2007

March 1, 2007
For Immediate Release

KLEES: McGuinty Liberal Education Mismanagement Threatens

Students' Future

(QUEEN'S PARK) Oak Ridges MPP Frank Klees, the PC Education and Citizenship & Immigration Critic today said that the McGuinty Liberals are responsible for the cuts to education programs and staff at Toronto schools that Toronto District School Board Trustees yesterday said must be made if the Board is to balance funding shortfalls from the McGuinty government.

"Three successive McGuinty Liberal education ministers, including Kathleen Wynne, have been consistently warned by teachers, trustees and parents that their chronic underfunding of school budgets and their downloading of programs onto school boards without the requisite funding necessary for their implementation would inevitably result in yesterday's announcement of cuts to important school personnel and programs," Klees said.

"When Kathleen Wynne was a school trustee, she saw the role of the trustee as being paramount to the proper functioning of the school system," Klees said. "As education minister, it is hypocritical for her to now turn a deaf ear to the pleas of Toronto school trustees who have been calling on her to adequately fund their school board and fix the funding formula to bring our education system out of the funding crisis it has been facing for months."

"Chronic Liberal mismanagement of our education system has now caught up with Kathleen Wynne as the Toronto District School Board struggles to find a way out of the maze of underfunding that she and the McGuinty government are solely responsible for," Klees said. "There is no way out for the Toronto board and they look to the education minister for the assistance she has been promising but has yet to deliver on."

" Toronto 's students cannot wait any longer for Kathleen Wynne to act!"

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For further information

Frank Klees, MPP

416-325-7316