Unsafe Classrooms the First Act of Ford’s Appointed Supervisor for the TDSB

TORONTO – Children and teachers are facing increasingly dangerous classroom conditions after a ministry-appointed supervisor, Rohit Gupta, decided to increase class sizes for several programs for students with disabilities. NDP MPPs Chandra Pasma (Ottawa–Nepean West) and Alexa Gilmour (Parkdale–High Park) released the following statement:

“The very first act taken by this former Metrolinx advisor has been to put children with disabilities and special needs at risk with larger class sizes,” said Pasma. “This is exactly the concerns parents and teachers had after learning that Minister Calandra was looking to replace experienced school boards with ministry appointed supervisors without the knowledge on what the real needs of our teachers and students are.”

“Increasing class sizes will not alleviate the problem of waitlists at hand,” said Gilmour. “Cutting corners in our schools will only make classrooms more unsafe for teachers and students with disabilities that require attentive supervision that is only truly achievable with lower student to teacher ratios. What we need is more funding for our schools so we can train and hire more teachers and education workers, not cheap solutions that will result in more chaos in our classrooms.”