Marcus Ryan, Councillor from Zorra Ward 3, shares his speech from the Rural Education Symposium November 26, Parkhill Ontario, North-Middlesex
Moses didn’t come down from the mountain with the funding formula. The current funding formula was written by the Conservatives and modified many times by the Liberals, so there’s plenty of blame to go around. But I’m not interested in blame, I’m interested in change.
What I want you to think about is that the funding formula, school boards, the Ministry of Education, municipalities were ALL designed by US to serve US.
If they are not doing what we want then we change it, and that’s what I want to talk about: change.
I never had any plans to become a Councillor, I worked as an Engineer for ten years, I’ve been a stay-at-home dad for ten years and about four years ago, I started my own engineering business from home.
But then, the Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB) began considering the closure of A.J. Baker P.S. in Kintore - my kids’ school. I got very involved with the community effort to “Save AJ” and really enjoyed and got great satisfaction from the community involvement. So I put my name forward for Council. Also during the “Save AJ” fight, I got to know Doug Reycraft and the Community Schools Alliance (CSA), and as a result got on the Executive of that group to help Doug revive and reinvigorate the CSA.
During that fight I came across one of my favourite quotes: “Fair doesn’t mean everybody gets the SAME, fair means everybody gets what they NEED.”
This has guided me in a lot of Council decisions and I bring it up today because it is especially relevant to this issue.
A funding formula that doesn’t recognize the inherent differences in rural and urban in a province the size of Ontario is giving everyone the SAME but no one what they NEED.
Consider an example outside education. My sister lives in Toronto, off Yonge St., just north of the 401. There’s a LOT of traffic. So let’s say the City consults with the Ministry of Transportation (MOT) for ideas to improve the traffic flow in an intersection. The MOT collects data, analyzes it, simulates solutions, and presents a solution to the City of Toronto Public Works: multiple lanes each direction, right turn ramps, left turn lanes, traffic light sensors, etc. The City of Toronto likes it and implements it and a year later everyone loves it: traffic is moving, commuters are happy, businesses are happy, residents are happy.
Source: ROI