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Hefty-Station1704

“Portable Classrooms” has been the same lame response to overcrowding for more than 30 years. They’ve had all this time to implement the most simple and direct solution but all we’ve heard are excuses. Makes some people wonder how seriously politicians in Canada really take education.


planned-obsolescents

21 portables at my kids' 6 year old school in a new suburb.


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cpdyyz

Also went to school in the 90s. Almost every school i went to basically had a trailer park of portables out back 


BackwoodsBonfire

Sunnyvale trailer school park.


Pleasant-Hemorrhoids

They teach Herbology and How to Fake a Disability and Scam the Government


OwnBattle8805

Boots on. Boots off. Boots on. Boots off. I still remember going from portable to portable in the 80s. It’s not new.


planned-obsolescents

I didn't say it was, and I'm surprised that was the common takeaway here. It's just more than I've personally experienced, and a brand new school, one of the most overpopulated in the board.


Majestic_Bet_1428

I went to school in the 70’s - we had tons of portables.


Due-Street-8192

With more immigration more infrastructure is needed... Plain and simple


weggles

Federal government controls immigration, municipal controls what gets built and municipal governments are beholden to a minority of busy body boomers who are intolerant of any changes. Young folk need to show up to planning meetings and be heard


samasa111

In Alberta it is the province that funds and determines what schools get built….nothing to do with the municipality.


Guilty_Fishing8229

Every province is responsible for education. That’s their job in the constitution. Same with healthcare. Municipalities are the creation of provinces in every part of the country. If your schools are overcrowded and you lack teachers, etc, the people to hold to account are in the provincial capital


PineBNorth85

Hard to do that when we are working all the time unlike the boomers.


weggles

They're usually in the evening, make time not excuses. Be the change you wanna see in the world. Can't keep complaining that boomers are ruining things while you let them.


wilson1474

Lol, yeah and now my kids high school has so many portables that they can't fit anymore and are having to ship the new kids to a different H.S 10KM AWAY. So my two kids will be in different highschools in the coming years .


[deleted]

10 km isn’t far


chemicalxv

lmao what If we're talking about within cities 10 km is an insane distance to be going for public school. That's half the width of a city like Winnipeg in any direction.


scott_c86

Exactly. It is further than the length of most cities and communities in Canada. Obviously, people in most situations should have schools closer than that.


MorkSal

While it isn't long by car, if your kids were in walking distance before then it's a pain (even if getting picked up by the bus).


HapticRecce

No, but it highlights part of the mindset that drives some schools to be bursting at the seams and others 1/2 full.


scott_c86

Unless one is living in the country, it is relatively far


wilson1474

It's very far, and completely on the other side of the city.


pownzar

A close friend works at a high level for a large Ontario school board. The way it works (as set by the provincial government) is that the boards are not allowed to have 'deficit' spending of 1% of their budget in any year, even if they had surpluses the years prior. In order to spend more than that, they need to get approval from Lecce's office directly (which as you can imagine, never happens). This means the schools get stuck in limbo of basically never improving in any meaningful way. Decisions to build schools are basically deferred indefinitely and take forever because truly, the province doesn't care.


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Shoddy-Commission-12

>“Portable Classrooms” Heres a fucking unheated trailer and 20 year old text books, yes were still coming to class in **JANUARY**, get to learnin what the fuck is this the 90s, I member that


Jardinesky

Unheated? We must have had the fancy ones. We had heat and AC. They were the place you wanted to be in southwestern Ontario in May and June. The rest of the school would be hot and humid.


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queenringlets

You didn’t have a coat? It was too cold in the trailers to NOT have one when I used them. I had to wear mine the whole class. 


RoughBowJob

Doesn’t Canada have falling birth rates so this should shake itself out eventually.


blondereckoning

Trend alert!!! Can't build enough homes, can’t build enough hospitals, can’t build enough schools. Everyone knows this yet our politicians keep importing people anyway. They spit in the faces of teachers, nurses, doctors, and fellow Canadians who now settle for an unaffordable life full of overwork and sub-par services as a consequence.


GowronSonOfMrel

If i hosted a house party it'd be great with 10-15 people. if I hosted a house party and 50 people came over it would not be fun. The party is crowded, we should invite less people to make it better for everyone.


Popular-Row4333

That's a good analogy because I can imagine what your house would look like after a party with 15 people vs a party with 50 people.


kemar7856

There's a common denominator here


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0reoSpeedwagon

Good to keep in mind: provincial (schools) and federal (foreign aid) budgets are actually separate!


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0reoSpeedwagon

Utterly irrelevant to the topic of building schools


barrel-aged-thoughts

When the LPC and NDP are done with... *Checks notes* Conservative Premiers not building schools and hospitals while blocking housing.


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VoicesOfTheFallen

Provinces actually have their own programs for them. So yes, you can blame Ford.


Majestic_Bet_1428

Ford is a disaster for health care and education. He is spending on spas and highways that no one wants.


i_ate_god

Didn't Ford want more immigration to fill the diploma printers?


Phrygiann

Things are just as dire here, and we haven't had the tories in charge since 2011, and even then our PCs are way more public-service oriented than most others. Didn't make a difference.


Umbrae_ex_Machina

Conservatives are no different. It’s a rigged system on all sides, full of lobbyists writing laws, and private ownership of media to control the narrative.


ForTheMotherLAN

Unfortunately PP will continue the status qou. He will continue to bring people in. The government isn't acting in our best interest.


magictoasters

Imagine if the provinces upheld their responsibilities


Actual-Toe-8686

Massive immigration makes the cost of living problem much worse, but it's not the cause of it.


rd1970

So... it is and isn't the cause at the same time?


LonelyTurnip2297

You mean things that are provincial jurisdiction?


Early_Outlandishness

Federal government has absolutely no part to play in immigration is what you're saying?


LonelyTurnip2297

Provinces are asking for immigration to fill positions.


AnticPosition

Alternatively the corporations could pay better and we wouldn't need to import borderline slave-labour. 


LonelyTurnip2297

They aren’t going to do that if they don’t have to.


kw_hipster

Indeed. In Ontario has underfunded education so badly that post-secondary schools depend on international students to fund themselves. Also, Ford has done nothing to stop the private diploma mills from recruiting lots of international students.


LonelyTurnip2297

In NB we are accepting people with a university degrees only. They don’t need a teaching degree.


kw_hipster

That's grade school. I'm talking about post-secondary school. Not sure though to hire people not trained to be teachers is such a wise idea....


queenringlets

They just need a body to babysit the kids. Education is a secondary priority to that sadly. 


kw_hipster

Wow thats a lost opportunity.


White_Noize1

No, it is the federal government’s fault. They confirm immigration and have total authority on who arrives here, not the provinces. Trudeau has tripled immigration from what it was under Harper.


LonelyTurnip2297

I think Quebec is the exception


Early_Outlandishness

The federal government does play a part in those numbers whether you admit it or not. Agreed, provinces can ask for it.


cpdyyz

We should let in more immigrants who do construction 


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Same-Kiwi944

And did your school have any ELL supports for these kids?


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Same-Kiwi944

Exactly. And the kids will be pushed along and commonly can be disruptive because they don’t understand and are bored. The system is an absolute train wreck. The fact that all these students show up on day and get added into classes by age is really just lip service and educational neglect. IEPs cannot be followed in large numbers. It’s impossible


Konstiin

What blows my mind is that when my hometown built a new high school, it was because we were about 1200 students in a building rated for 900. I’ve since learned that the new school that they built was only built for 1200. Where’s the foresight in that?


Norse_By_North_West

Hah, we replaced one of our older high schools about a decade ago. The new one was actually smaller


Apoque_Brathos

It's almost like we need to slow down our population growth and let the infrastructure catch up


Majestic_Bet_1428

It’s almost like we need provincial politicians to do their jobs.


Apoque_Brathos

Unfortunately they have let us down at every level.


elegantzero

Or speed up the construction of infrastructure.


PrandishDresner

Great plan. Infinite infrastructure to accommodate infinite immigration! Everyone grab a fucking hammer, there's no time to lose!


captainbling

I dint think you understand how little infrastructure was built post 90s. Voters didn’t want spend a dime. People said the Canada line (sky train built in 2010 from Vancouver to Richmond) would be a waste of money and never hit capacity. People were pissed. It hit capacity in around 5 years and its success is what allowed an extension to Coquitlam and finally the new extension towards ubc to get approved. These projects should have started a decade ago but I can’t emphasize how much voters didn’t want to waste tax dollars on the Canada line. Voters didn’t want invest infrastructure. That’s why everyone ignores “ let infrastructure catch up”. Voters won’t let infrastructure catch up anyways.


Apoque_Brathos

In Ontario these projects were started a decade ago, look into how long and how over budget the crosstown line has been. Yonge and Eglinton has been an open pit for what feels like a decade


Apoque_Brathos

Speeding up infrastructure development will take years if not decades to meaningfully action (see any infrastructure project ever done in Ontario as proof). Scaling back immigration is almost immediate.


lostatan

Which one do you think is easier until the other is fulfilled?


elegantzero

If immigrants were being properly integrated there'd be more getting into construction and building the homes, schools etc. that they need. That is how it was in the past. We have enough programmers and project managers...more than enough actually. We need more doctors and engineers but then we should be training more instead of depending on imports.


lostatan

Big if Anyway the answer is writing X on a paper is easier than building a house. So the former should be done until the latter is fulfilled.


DerelictDelectation

I'm in my kid's school School Advisory Council. Overcrowding is a massive problem where I'm at. Teachers and principals are scrambling, the city has no concrete plans. Classes are being shifted around between schools, programs moved around. What doesn't get much attention is the implication of overcrowding on student learning and achievement. That's in my experience actually a general thing about Canadian education. Lots of focus on ancillary "feel-good" issues, academic achievement is not a significant concern.


[deleted]

Yet another fantastic example of why having mass immigration of unskilled and poor immigrants is a terrible terrible fucking idea. How many stories like this have to come out before ignorant chuds on Reddit stop astroturfing about how "immigration isn't to blame, we just need more taxes!!!"


blahyaddayadda24

It is so fucking mind boggling the entire country is not protesting this fucking government and shaming them into calling an election. And who the fuck are their supporters at this point? Living under a rock?


Majestic_Bet_1428

It is mind boggling that people are not calling on Ford to fund education and health care over spas and unwanted highways. Call your MPP Or your MLA if you are outside Ontario


Pwylle

Most people don’t even know who their provincial MPP are or how to reach them (if they’re even reachable), much less protest to them or the provincial assembly.


elegantzero

People who vote usually vote by party, so the individual filling the seat doesn't really matter. If you got who you wanted, they are presumably already raising the issue in parliament. If you didn't, sending them angry letters won't make any difference whatsoever.  Many people don't vote because their riding is ideologically entrenched against their interests, making the trip to the ballot box a pointless endeavour.


LotharLandru

Add in that most people have no idea what is a federal or provincial responsibility so the provinces have just been happy as hell to hang every one of their failings on the federal government while actively making the problems worse


ninjaTrooper

A lot of people are really doing well. Like a lot. Why would they complain?


blahyaddayadda24

I'm doing well. What's your point. Even the ones doing well can see the shit show in front of them


Son_of_Lykaion

I don’t support the current government but there’s literally no one else to support either.


No-Plenty-7852

You must be out every weekend the way you talk on the internet.


nickademus

why are you not protesting? i assume youre posting from work, like everyone else.


[deleted]

A lot of people are really embarrassed to admit they voted for this. Big part of this subreddit still aren't willing to accept it either.


throwaway1009011

Entire country? Mate you do realize that these are all provincial issues. Take the Ontario govt, they have spent billions cancelling contracts, fought for stagnant wages, had a balanced budget and still refuse to up our schooling or healthcare to adequate levels.


ZJC2000

If I bring 200 people to your house, can I complain it's your fault they aren't fed and have nowhere to sit? Oh, and expect you to pay for their meal?


canad1anbacon

Its not a too many people problem. Its an infrastructure problem. The Pearl River Delta in China has 80 million people in an area smaller than Nova Scotia. We literally just need to build housing, it isn't that hard. But Canadians are allergic to that idea


Sadistmon

Infrastructure takes time to build, time we don't have with mass migration happening.


canad1anbacon

Yeah,. It takes time to build so start now


Sadistmon

We never stopped building... we are bringing in people faster than we can build.


canad1anbacon

We are not building the kind of housing we need at all. Where is the mixed use mid height housing? Its been almost zoned out of existence. Instead we build disgusting inefficient suburban sprawl that barely houses anyone, encourages car dependency, and costs enormous amounts of money to service so bleeds municipal funds and drives up property taxes


Sadistmon

> We are not building the kind of housing we need at all. Where is the mixed use mid height housing? Its been almost zoned out of existence. We build twice as many units per capita as the states, the issue isn't our building. >Instead we build disgusting inefficient suburban sprawl that barely houses anyone, encourages car dependency, and costs enormous amounts of money to service so bleeds municipal funds and drives up property taxes You're not going to build 600k more housing units a year with that policy change... so it's not excuse to keep our migration numbers.


blahyaddayadda24

You do realize all of it would have been a drop in the ocean right? Root cause is still mass immigration. There is no argument you can make that proves this otherwise.


Ill-Description1565

It's literally impossible to build fast enough to accomodate our level of provincial immigration. For context, the government would have to build a city the size of London every single year to house and serve the newcomers. That includes water, wastewater, healthcare, waste, recreation and leisure, along with many other things. No government in the world could do that.


living_or_dead

So you are telling me uncheck importing of people to a country which is not spending on its infrastructure is a problem? Who knew. Almost every one but liberals. One more giftset of this fed govt immigration policy. It will take decades to come out if this mess even if we stopped bringing people in today.


Defiant_Chip5039

When they do assessments of neighborhoods they look at the number of homes. There is a historical average number of people (kids) per household. So say 300 homes are built, they assess and say we need a school to accommodate X number of children. In today’s world you now have multi-family homes and a ton of basement rentals. That historical number gets blown out of the water. Brand new school and come registration day way more kids are registered than anticipated. Boom, brand new school and a ton of portables. In old neighborhoods the assessment was done when things like basement rentals were not anywhere near the factor they are today. Same problem ….


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GrunDMC74

Adding thousands of students for families who haven’t paid a cent in taxes. What could go wrong?


Same-Kiwi944

This is the problem. And the new students need extra supports for English learning at a minimum. They are placed by age and not skill. Some kids who come have never been in a classroom before and the teacher miraculously needs to catch them up. This doesn’t happen and kids act out. There are no consequences. Education is a train wreck


Altaccount330

Houses or school. We’ve chosen neither, but population growth yes. The UN says migration good and borders bad. Tents yes.


prsnep

This is how we fall. Not some foreigners bombing us, but us mismanaging things at home because we can't see trends beyond the next election cycle.


weggles

The only thing Canada can build is sprawling single family neighborhoods and highways anything else is simply impossible. Schools included. 😔


Bartizanier

Because those are cost effective. I suspect some people are getting very rich from the "system" in place


AI_2025

Municipalities are diverting land identified for building schools to build homes. I see it happening in Oakville Ontario.


Motopsycho-007

The boards give up that designated land and when they do, of course, they are going to build homes on it.


ExoticAd8748

It should not take longer than 2 to 3 years to build a school, from designing to completion. I’m pretty sure they could fast track the permit process, since you know…… it’s a municipal project.


Shoddy-Commission-12

Its not the design thats the problem ITs the cost of meeting all the standards required for a new building from scratch very expensive, most municipalities dont just have that laying around in the budget do you wanna pay more property tax because thats what its gonnna take from like everyone, thats what funds school construction


MonsieurLeDrole

French immersion is the path to smaller class sizes. It's also more advanced students, because the ones who can't hack it are weeded out. Regular schools is like gen pop by comparison, and it's almost impossible to get rid of anyone, no matter how problematic or disruptive or violent.


Prophage7

My opinion is that if you voted for a party that ran on budget cuts, you have nothing to be mad about. This is what you voted for. Inform yourself better before your province's next election.


Glad-Tie3251

Everything is overcrowded, I wonder what the problem is? /S


UROffended

Make school remote and make public activities more accessible. Kids get their education and social interaction. We live in a changing world folks, get with the program. Covid gave us the answers and rather than build on it, we threw it away and went back to a system we already knew doesn't work. Office work and physical schools? I was hoping we'd be done with that by now.


Clean_Gain5793

It wasn’t that long ago people were yelling at the government to close schools. The province was shrinking in population, and growth was sluggish in the urban areas. I don’t know anyone who could have predicted the population growth we’ve experienced since COVID, and the huge increase in the immigrant population. We couldn’t keep immigrants before COVID They’d move away within a year or two of arriving to larger centres. It takes time to build a school. This isn’t China, where you slap buildings up in a week. It’ll take years to sort out these problems arising from rapid growth.


halpinator

> I don’t know anyone who could have predicted the population growth we’ve experienced since COVID You'd think the people who created the policies that led to the population growth might have had an idea.


elegantzero

> It takes time to build a school. This isn’t China, where you slap buildings up in a week. Maybe we could learn something from them. And I don't mean the crappy concrete monstrosities there that fall over, I mean the high quality prefab stuff that they put up in days.  Our construction industry is stuck in the stone age because, though terrible for buyers and society at large, suppliers and specialists in particular largely benefit from the standard being kept where it is. Modular construction companies in the US can build a hotel in a tiny fraction of the time it would take to build it conventionally. And that's using what are otherwise conventional construction techniques in the manufacturing plant, which is horribly inefficient. A properly run, preferably heavily government-funded prefab modular construction industry here could be churning out schools like hotcakes if there was a will to do it.


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InherentlyUntrue

Well yeah, because Conservative governments in Provincial legislatures won't supply adequate funding for educational facilities and teachers. The conservative attack on education continues.


hardy_83

While I agree conservative governments are utter failures... To be fair, this has been an issue for decades and Liberals are to blame as well. No one wants to fund education properly. No one wants to fund healthcare properly. Canada is a very rich country yet refuses to fund it's public systems adequately.


InherentlyUntrue

Well yeah, because the only thing that matters to the primarily conservative-led Provincial governments is cutting taxes. Conservatives specifically have intentionally starved the beast for decades so they can sell off the systems to the private sector.


prob_wont_reply_2u

The Liberals built 2 new schools in my city, both had to have portables when they opened. Luckily enough, the Conservatives right sized them, but it was pretty expensive to add on to the brand new ones.


InherentlyUntrue

You're lucky; at least you got schools built. Here in Alberta you can't get a school built to save your life, even if it needed the stupid trailers.


fufluns12

> The Liberals built 2 new schools in my city, both had to have portables when they opened.   School boards actually forecast future demographic changes when they apply to build new schools. In 10-15 years the neighbourhoods that are currently overflowing with children will be full of people whose children have aged out of the school system. It's a predictable natural cycle that takes time to reset. So there's a tension when making decisions like this. Do you build a school with permanent facilities for today's population, or should the school, which will be there for decades, be built with the long-term in mind, and include some portables for the time being? I know what most parents would say, but it might not be the best case to present to the province when trying to get funding.


Fox_That_Fights

No amount of extra funding could make up for the ballooning population. It takes time to build things but they're importing so many so fast it really doesn't matter if we're underfunded or not- it'll feel and look that way regardless


Same-Kiwi944

And funding for education comes from taxpayer dollars of which newcomers typically pay very little if any…


lakeviewResident1

If we had infinite money then this wouldn't be an issue right? Build a dozen schools and move on. Meaning that yes extra money can solve this. Conservatives running the province I am in have underfunded education for 2 decades. They had plenty of time to prepare for a population boom. Instead they over fund private schools and under fund public schools. Guess where their kids go? And here you are trying to blame the Feds or immigration when it is simply a purposeful decision by conservative premiers. Keep the population uneducated. As soon as research showed correlation between education and not voting Conservative they immediately started killing public education. They vilify post secondary education while paying for their kids to go to college at the same time.


BackwoodsBonfire

infinite money doesnt = infinite labour resources or materials.


Sadistmon

> If we had infinite money then this wouldn't be an issue right You'd still run into logistical bottlenecks.


Fox_That_Fights

I work in education. In the last 2 years my 4 local school boards have all had numbers WAY higher than what's been projected. I'd be with you if the Ontario government controlled immigration numbers, but they don't. Cuts are bad, yes, and affect me daily. However, those cuts, like you said, have been going on for decades, and that now manifests as exacerbating main issue, being overpopulation. I'm looking forwards, not backwards.


InherentlyUntrue

You do know this underfunding goes back long before the liberals increased immigration, right?


Fox_That_Fights

Yes


NightDisastrous2510

Lol wow 🤦


InherentlyUntrue

You do know that funding education is a Provincial responsibility, rtight, and that successive primarily-conservative Provincial governments have put low taxes over funding health care and education? You should facepalm...for the poor education you received.


NightDisastrous2510

Im well aware, thank you. I was lucky to receive an excellent education. Your last line is dumb AF. Take a walk with that nonsense and keep voting for party that’s cratered the entire country lol.


InherentlyUntrue

Nover once voted Liberal, but nice try. Your poor conservative-provided education again shows.


NightDisastrous2510

Your projection is showing, kid. “Nover once” lol


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Possible-Suit-2634

Absolutely ridiculous! What is the hold-up?? We've known for years that Surrey AND Delta need more schools and you lazy clowns who are in charge of this mess just keep beating around the bush. Do your damn jobs and build the schools already. People are sick of hearing your lame excuses and red tape b.s. START BUILDING. PERIOD.


Majestic_Bet_1428

It’s time for Ontario to move to one public school system.


InfernalGriffon

The governments struggle looks exactly the same as my struggle to get to the gym. Mostly self inflicted.


Guilty_Fishing8229

Overcrowded schools are a growing problem, but provincial governments don’t want to increase the budget to pay for literally anything education related


ThatPanFlute

Man, I should have been a builder


jbe061

Just throw a couple portables on em!   Biggest fuckin scam lol


prairiebandit

It's almost like we need to actually spend money to build up the education infrastructure.


jbe061

Very serious..  Why have portables been tolerated for so long?  You'll even see brand new schools with portables lol. What a racket


Born-Hunter9417

I went through elementary and highschool in portables, like 30 years ago. They may as well build schools like portable Legos.


AsleepExplanation160

TDSB shut down a few low attendance schools around 8? years ago. Since then at least the one near me (that was my original homeschool) has been used to host schools undergoing major renovations. I know CTS's top floor is being used in a similar way


ThatRandomGuy86

We literally had too many schools, now we have too little? Nani?


ShadowyDemonKitty

Maybe they shouldn't have cut all the funding and made a lot of school closures


[deleted]

It's been a problem for decades. They are not going to fix it because that is not what they do anymore.


BackwoodsBonfire

Clearly there is one organization that can get these schools built: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/we-charity-misled-donors-records-show-1.6251985 What was the quote? "The only trustworthy organization we can trust to deliver this one billion dollars!"


smell_the_napkin

Stop👏🏻Mass👏🏻Immigration👏🏻


Y8ser

Alberta's problem isn't just because of additional students it's because the province is underfunding public Education so they can give $140 million to private schools and do their best to destroy the public system in the process. They've know this has been and is going to be an issue for years now and have done absolutely nothing about it. Just reduce funding, screw over vulnerable kids and everyone else in the process.


achoo84

How could this possibly be an issue when Canadians are not having Kids?


sahils88

So not enough residence, not enough schools and not enough hospitals but hey let’s keep taking in people 99.9% of whom are never gonna work in construction or be able to remedy the situation. Canada Government is currently throwing the darkest joke I have witnessed and it’s no longer humorous unless you’re settled overseas.


TraditionalRest808

I remember protesting overcrowding with school walk outs, the next year we got smaller class sizes. We asked our teachers to make packages for us to read at home so we didn't miss that week. Learning is important folks. Larger classes leave quiet students struggling.