December 24, 2009 (Catholic Education, Catholic Schools)
Caryn Swark’s cartoon, for this week combines the theme of Jesus birth with the classic memory of the annual Christmas concert…beautiful Caryn, and to all of you out there in cyberspace may your Christmas day be blessed with joy, love and peace.
Editor’s Note: I have often wondered what exactly the law in France is about funding Catholic schools and other faith based schools. It is well known that France has a secular funded public school system many believe akin to the American system. But this survey by Angus Reid Global points to a very different reality. In that sense it both supports the funding of a multi-faith regime while maintaining a publicly funded model.
December 23, 2009 (Catholic Education, Catholic Schools)
(Angus Reid Global Monitor) – The vast majority of people in France still agree with a 50-year old law which allows private schools to enter into contracts with the state, according to a poll by CSA published in La Croix. 84 per cent of respondents think the Debré Law was a good thing.
The Debré Law of 1959—introduced by then prime minister Michel Debré— regulated the relationship between private and state schools. Under its terms, the salaries of private school teachers are paid by the state.
Catholic schools were amongst the most benefitted with this particular law, since they were noticeably short of funds. At the same time, the government managed to offer more schooling options to a growing population.
On Dec. 18, Éric de Labarre, general secretary of Catholic education, said the Debré Law “allows guaranteeing school pluralism while respecting the unity of the nation.”
Polling Data
In France, since the passing of the Debré Law in 1959, private schools can enter into a contract with the State so that their operating expenses are dealt with under the same conditions as public schools. Do you think this is a good thing or a bad thing?
| Good | 84% |
| Bad | 15% |
| Not sure | 1% |
Source: CSA / La Croix
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,009 French adults, conducted on Nov. 9 and Nov. 10, 2009. No margin of error was provided.
December 22, 2009 (Catholic education, Catholic schools)
Editor’s Note: The Toronto Star has a series based on the articles it has published on Early Learning in Ontario. The numbers after the tile and clip refer to the number of comments available.
Sudbury leads the race to full-day kindergarten Kristin Rushowy December 1, 2009
As Toronto’s public and Catholic boards get an extra week to finish their lists of the first schools to offer full-day…
Porter: Unravelling over ’seamless’ day for kids Catherine Porter November 28, 2009
My daughter will go into kindergarten next September. That means she could be part of the province’s experiment with full-day… (19)
Experts find holes in plan for full-day kindergarten Kristin Rushowy November 26, 2009
Full-day kindergarten is off to a “rough start” because the province is ignoring research on what makes it work best… (2)
Coyle: Premier’s last shot to shape legacy? Jim Coyle October 28, 2009
It might well be that Premier Dalton McGuinty had his last good day on Tuesday, as he announced his government’s plan for full-day…
80 city schools may have full day JK by September Kristin Rushowy October 28, 2009
About 80 Toronto public schools – or 161 classrooms – could offer full-day kindergarten starting next fall. Toronto’s Catholic… (31)
Price tag for all-day kindergarten rises $500M Kristin Rushowy October 27, 2009
The cash-strapped Ontario government has chosen to spend as much as $500 million a year more than recommended on full-day… (101)
Disney to refund Baby Einstein DVDs in Canada Jesse McLean October 26, 2009
The Walt Disney Company is offering a refund for all the Baby Einstein DVDs that didn’t turn children into pint-sized brainiacs. (19)
Mr. Premier, don’t drag your heels on early learning report David Crombie October 5, 2009
In the next few days, Premier Dalton McGuinty will be making an announcement that could begin a revolution in education and help…
Peel school board director to lead province’s early learning effort Kristin Rushowy September 28, 2009
Jim Grieve, director of the Peel public school board since 2002, is leaving to head up the provincial government’s early learning…
Budget clouds early-learning plans Tanya Talaga September 23, 2009
The province will go ahead with full-day learning starting next September, but says it might not be able to move as quickly on…
Province on verge of giving in to teachers Kristin Rushowy September 22, 2009
The province, in a move that would appease the elementary teachers’ union, is close to approving a plan that would put… (85)
Cash for early learning lags while national interest grows Laurie Monsebraaten September 15, 2009
National interest in early learning is sweeping the country with three provinces, including Ontario, planning to expand…
Baby steps toward a more peaceful world Debra Black September 13, 2009
Mary Gordon wants to change humanity by rewiring a child’s brain — one child at a time.
Fraser Mustard, Charles Pascal and Lorna Weigand were all instrumental in the Ontario plan to make…
Full-day learning starts next year
Premier Dalton McGuinty today will announce full-day learning for 4- and 5-year-olds starting next…
Single system for child care encouraged
The province’s plan to introduce full-day learning for 4- and 5-year-olds starting in 2010 is a…
December 21, 2009 (Catholic education, Catholic schools)
THUNDER BAY, ON, /CNW press release modified
Today, members of the Lakehead University Faculty Association (LUFA) will rally in Thunder Bay and Orillia to protest the closure of the university on December 21-24, 2009. Faculty and staff will not be paid during this forced closing, in direct violation of their collective agreements.
This move by Lakehead administration will harm research and damage the reputation of the university. Employees should not be made to suffer because administrators are unable to manage university finances.
The schedule of the day is as follows:
Thunder Bay Campus
- 9:00AM: Participants gather at the Oliver Road Community Centre (563 Oliver Road)
- 9:30AM: March to Lakehead Campus begins
- 10AM: Rally and speeches on Lakehead campus.
- 11:30AM: Event ends
Speeches will take place outside the Agora. Speakers include:
- Bruce Hyer, Member of Parliament, Thunder Bay – Superior North
- Mary Kozorys, on behalf John Rafferty, Member of Parliament, Thunder Bay – Rainy River
- Joey Farrell, President of the Lakehead University Faculty Association
- Mark Langer, President of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations
- Jim Turk, Executive Director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers
- Wayne Peters, Vice President of the Canadian Association of University Teachers
Orillia Campus
- 9:45AM: Participants gather at the Heritage Place, at the corner of Colborne and West
- 10:00AM: Speeches
Speeches will take place outside Heritage Place. Speakers include:
- Garfield Dunlop, Member of Provincial Parliament, Simcoe North
- Daphne Bonar, Departmental Representative for the Lakehead University Faculty Association
- Karen Wheeler, Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations
December 21, 2009 (Catholic education, Catholic schools)
TORONTO, Dec. 17 /CNW press release
Earlier this year, the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association (OPSBA) released a Discussion Paper entitled: What If? Technology in the 21st Century Classroom. http://www.opsba.org/files/WhatIf.pdf. As school trustees, we want to be part of developing a provincial vision and strategies that will make all our classrooms connected and relevant. As a follow up to What if?, OPSBA has released Getting Ready for Learning Technologies – an interest inventory survey for those people involved in bringing effective use of learning technologies to our schools. The survey takes only a minute to complete online and can be found at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/OPSBA_GettingReadySurvey
As OPSBA prepared the paper What if? Technology in the 21st Century Classroom, we often heard that people working in this area felt isolated and unaware of relevant work that might be happening elsewhere. This isolation creates duplicated effort, and lost opportunities for collaboration and joint positive initiatives among people in the Information Technology field.
OPSBA’s goal in launching the interest inventory survey is to take a first step to build a community of information sharing and make everyone’s efforts more beneficial for all. OPSBA hopes the Getting Ready for Learning Technologies survey link will find its way to anyone involved in working to bring effective learning technologies to our students and schools.
The survey shows that OPSBA has made an effort to organize the work that needs to be done into seven specific disciplines (or “layers”): Culture, Capacity, Curriculum/Courseware, Computing Devices, Connectivity, Construction, and Coordination.
This structure will help make it easier to keep track of the work that is currently being done in these areas. We have shared this framework with the Ontario Ministry of Education to support their planning for learning technologies. While OPSBA’s work naturally focuses on Ontario, our hope is that people from around the world will share their interests and insights with us.
December 19, 2009
Editor’s Note: Although this is not directly about education, it is about the very rule of law in a parliamentary system of government. The actions of this government in refusing to obey the will of Parliament is a threat to the principles which underlie our system of governance and thus ultimately to our system of education. This piece by Reg Whitaker describes a means by which the Harper government can avoid a crisis and so is a must read for all concerned about the nature our democracy. It is shared under the terms the common good. The original can be read HERE (Toronto Star December 18, 2009)
While Canadians take time off to celebrate the holiday season, there is another potential constitutional crisis looming in Ottawa. The House of Commons has passed a motion requiring the release of unredacted documents concerning the Afghan detainees to the committee hearing the issue. The government has refused, setting up the possibility that it could be found in contempt of Parliament. If the executive and legislative branches of government were to come to deadlock, an unprecedented constitutional crisis could be precipitated.
It is only a year since the last constitutional crisis, when the Liberals and the NDP tried to form a coalition government, and the Governor General granted Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s request to prorogue Parliament to stave off the defeat of his minority government. Already Ottawa is rife with rumours of yet another prorogation, with no return until after the Olympics. How many times can Harper get away with closing down Parliament whenever his government is threatened?
The government can avoid this crisis quite simply. It can comply with the request of the House. Yet it seems unwilling to do so.
Government ministers have asserted that they are bound by the Access to Information Act. Section 15(1) states: “The head of a government institution may refuse to disclose any record requested under this Act that contains information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to be injurious to the conduct of international affairs, the defence of Canada or any state allied or associated with Canada or the detection, prevention or suppression of subversive or hostile activities.” They argue that material redacted from the documents would cause harm to Canadian military and diplomatic interests if disclosed.
It is no wonder that the Conservatives are taking this tack. It pictures MPs endangering the safety of Canadian troops. Indeed, the Conservatives have not shrunk from impugning the patriotism of their opponents. Polls indicate that the public is largely skeptical of the government’s position. They should be.
There is a parliamentary precedent for handling just such a situation without precipitating a crisis. In 1990, the House of Commons, on behalf of the justice committee, asked the solicitor general to produce unredacted reports provided to Correctional Services Canada concerning the escape of two inmates from federal prisons (one of whom was the notorious murderer Allan Legere). This was initially refused on the grounds that the minister was prevented by the Privacy Act from complying.
The standing committee on privileges and elections advised that Parliament has the power to call for “people, papers and records”; that the House could issue an enforceable order; and that anyone disregarding that order could be cited for contempt of Parliament. The House unanimously called upon the minister to provide the unredacted reports to be received by the committee in an in camera session, under terms including a ban on publication of any information protected from disclosure under either the Privacy Act or Access acts. The minister complied and, as it turned out, the committee concluded that the government had not, as first feared, been trying to cover up any impropriety.
In the present case, the government could provide unredacted documents to the MPs under a similar condition of confidentiality. National security would not be compromised. Committee members would no longer be at the absurd disadvantage of not having access to the documents that were contested before it by diplomat Richard Colvin and the public servants and generals who were called by the government to undermine his credibility. After all, the retired generals are no longer in government service, yet they were given full access to the documents, on the basis of which Gen. Rick Hillier termed Colvin’s claims “ludicrous.” Why should the elected representatives of the people be kept in the dark while trying to assess these conflicting claims?
There is another aspect to consider: Just because the government claims information disclosure would harm national security does not make it so. The law provides for review of access decisions by the Federal Court. Justice Dennis O’Connor’s inquiry into the Maher Arar affair ran into disputes with the government over what could be published in its report. Material was withheld from publication on grounds of national security confidentiality, but the commission appealed to the Federal Court. Federal Court Justice Simon Noël reviewed the redactions and ordered the release of much of the excluded material, with no harm to national security. In fact, it became apparent that some of the redactions had no basis other than preventing embarrassment to government agencies.
If the parliamentary committee were to receive complete documents in camera, it might decide to refer redactions it found questionable to the Federal Court. In this way, the public might eventually gain a better appreciation of the facts.
The government’s refusal to consider a reasonable accommodation with the parliamentarians is highly suspicious. Suspicions grow when we consider that it has stonewalled requests for documents from the Military Police Complaints Commission, whose investigation of the Afghan detainee issue actually led to the calling of the parliamentary inquiry. Yet the members of the commission are fully security cleared. Worse, the government has refused to renew the term of the MPCC’s chair, who had initiated the inquiry. Suspicions grow further when the government adamantly refuses to consider calling a public inquiry into the affair.
If the Prime Minister is actually considering proroguing Parliament in a desperate attempt to keep the lid on, suspicion will turn into certainty: This must represent a cover-up of serious wrongdoing.
There is no reasonable explanation of why the Harper government has gone to such lengths to suppress these documents, other than fear for its own political well-being. If it wishes to allay such suspicions, it can take up any of the available opportunities to provide transparency without endangering national security. If it does not, the public will have to draw its own conclusions.
Reg Whitaker is the co-author with Stuart Farson of Accountability in and for National Security, a study for the Institute for Research in Public Policy.
Caryn Swark is a Grade 3 teacher at St. Patrick’s Fine Arts School in Lethbridge Alberta.
Her personal website can be found at http://carynswark.wordpress.com/
(Catholic education, Catholic schools)
December 19, 2009 (Catholic education, Catholic schools)
Dust
Arthur Slade
Harper Canada
ISBN 9780006485940
This book won the Governor General’s Literary Award back in 2001 for Children’s Literature. I loved it. Set in a small town in rural Saskatchewan of Horshoe something strange is going on. Robert’s younger brother has gone missing and soon no one seems to even remember him. The story set in a depression era dust bowl farm community, has many unique twists and turns.
The strange things started happening when Abram Harisch arrived in town; he appears to be taking control of the townspeople through his magic, mirrors and bewitching nature. Harisch has promised the town a rain-making machine, and in following this dream they are slowing losing all they care about and don’t even notice. But Robert does and he knows he needs to avoid Harisch and figure out what is really going on or the whole town could be lost.
There are two different cover jackets for this book. I prefer the original to the newer one but either way it is a great adventure read.
Steven McEvoy works full time as an IT professional, but his passion is learning. As a result he is part time mature student at St. Jerome’s University at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo Ontario in the Religious Studies Program.
His personal blog is http://bookreviewsandmore.ca/
December 19, 2009 (Catholic education, Catholic schools)
# 32 in the OCSTA “Good News in Ontario’s Catholic Schools” series
Wellington Catholic District School Board Vice-Chair, Marino Gazzola and Chair, Rev. Dennis Noon, are presented with an Advent Poster at the Inaugural meeting of the Board that took place on Monday, December 7. The poster was designed by Bishop Macdonell Catholic High School student, Mariah Perry. Also shown in the photo is Chuck Temple, Faculty Advisor at Bishop Macdonell.
December 18, 2009 (Catholic education, Catholic schools)
The Toronto Catholic District School has begun to plan it 2010 – 2011 school year budget.
As a result it has issued an invitation to parents, staff and Catholic stakeholders to participate in consultation sessions regarding the planning of the budget.
Consultation began November 14th at the annual Catholic School Advisory Councils. In November and December, the Board also made presentations to the Community Advisory Committee, the Special Education Advisory Committee, Catholic Parent Involvement Committee and the Union Staff Liaison Committee.
Parents, staff and all stakeholders in Catholic education are invited to one of the following sessions in 2010 to provide input into the budget:
Saturday, January 9th
9:00 a.m.-11:30 a.m.
and
1:00 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
at the Catholic Education Centre, 80 Sheppard Avenue East, North York
Tuesday, January 12th
6:30 p.m.-9:00 p.m.
Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School, 2 St. Andrews Boulevard, Etobicoke
Thursday, January 14th
6:30 p.m.-9:00 p.m.
St. Thomas More Catholic School, 2300 Ellesmere Road, Scarborough
For those who are not able to attend one of the sessions, a survey is available online at www.tcdsb.org.
Public delegations regarding the budget can also be made to the Board in March and April 2010.
TCDSB encourages all Catholic school supporters to provide input into the budget.
