by Louise Brown, The Toronto Star

“We should drop the euphemisms,” suggested Trustee Josh Matlow. “Let's stop saying school closings will get us ‘better schools and brighter futures' and every student will get a pony and schools will be made of chocolate,” said Matlow, who nevertheless supports closing underenrolled schools and recommended 10 reviews a year.

“We should actually show empathy to people who face losing their school.”

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Tre Anthony from CTV’s So You Think You Can Dance, Josh Matlow Toronto trustee, Paula Brancati from DeGrassi: The Next Generation, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Dr. Eric Hoskins and Raymond Ablack from DeGrassi: The Next Generation at the launch of ChangeTheWorld - Ontario Youth Volunteer Challenge.

by Kristin Rushowy, The Toronto Star

It has gone from a full day to two-and-a-half hours, five speakers to three and now will cost less than half its original $345,000 budget.

Chris Spence, the Toronto board's director of education, told trustees Wednesday that after hearing concerns, he has made changes to the one-day teachers' conference Sept. 1 at the Air Canada Centre on how to improve education in schools.

Wednesday night's change was the latest for an issue that has proved controversial, with one trustee trying yet again to have the professional development day quashed, after having previously likened the cost to a "drunken spending spree" when the board faced a $17 million budget deficit.

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By DON PEAT, Toronto Sun

More than 140 Toronto public school education assistants will face the budget axe next week.

Toronto District School Board trustees will vote on a staff recommendation Wednesday to lay off about a quarter of the board’s EAs in an effort to save $5.8 million.

The board has more than 500 full-time equivalent EAs, but the recommendation would cut that number to 364 by September.

Board chairman Bruce Davis said that under the collective agreement trustees must approve the layoffs on Wednesday if they are to take effect in September.

“These are very, very difficult layoffs, obviously these are affecting our employees so they are affecting families,” Davis said. “It’s a very difficult choice for us and frankly it’s a budgetary measure.”

Foolish to cancel program aimed to help disengaged students before problems spiralled out of control

By Moira MacDonald, The Toronto Sun

Just over two years ago I wrote about a pilot program to help high school students on short-term suspensions get back on track so they didn’t end up in worse trouble down the road.

The targets for the Stop Gap program at Northern Secondary School were not violent students. They were the kids identified in the much-publicized, $800,000-plus Falconer school safety report — the classic “hall wanderers” — disengaged, skipping class and disrupting others.

They were students on three to five-day suspensions — the most common form of suspension at the Toronto District School Board.

These were the kids people were trying to get to before their problems spiralled into more destructive behaviour — and more expensive interventions.

I write “were” because last April Stop Gap was stopped, period.

When trustee Josh Matlow criticized director Chris Spence’s plan to spend $345,000 on a one-day teaching conference at last month’s board meeting, Matlow asked how he could explain the cancellation of a program for at-risk students due to funding problems when the board was prepared to spend exponentially more on a conference.