FORD AIMING TO MAKE KINDERGARTEN AFFORDABLE

   Blizzard:  The year before the Liberals came to power in Ontario, 2002-03, the education budget was around $14.8 billion. That figure has doubled. The 2018-2019 education budget is estimated at around $28 billion. Meanwhile, there’s been an approximate 5% decline in enrolment in public schools and a sharp growth in the number of kids in private schools.

   Each full-day kindergarten class has a teacher and an early childhood educator. Why do you need a fully-qualified teacher in a toddler nursery? Why are we paying the same kind of money to someone supervising four-year-olds in a sandbox as we do to a person teaching quadratic equations?
   Especially in JK, the program could be delivered entirely by early childhood educators, who are paid less. Sure, the unions will squawk. But they didn’t get elected last year. Ford did.