The following is a statement from the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) responding to provincial Grants for Student Needs (GSN) funding:
“The Ford government has once again failed to address the long-term funding gap in public education. The details in GSN funding and Priorities and Partnerships Funding (PPF) confirm the government’s plan to continue to underfund public education.
The government went to great lengths to inflate the funding increase to education funding. Hosting two press conferences over two days to create an impression that they are investing hundreds of millions of dollars into meeting the ‘basic needs’ of students is completely disingenuous. While claiming that students are struggling in math, this government uses its own creative math strategies to portray that they are increasing student funding by remarkable amounts. However, after accounting for the reallocation of this existing funding and the elimination of the COVID-19 Learning Recovery Fund, the actual increase in per-student GSN funding from 2022-23 to 2023-24 is only 0.72 per cent.