Our voices need to be heard!
Education is a provincial responsibility. The provincial government AND your local school board need to know how you feel!
WRITE and/or CALL the Provincial Government folks below. It can be short and sweet! Send one email to everyone at once. Add in as many details as you are comfortable sharing. For a bit of a template, see below. If you’re shy, leave a VOICEMAIL!
Premier Doug Ford (use this form or premier@ontario.ca) 416-325-1941
Education Minister Stephen Lecce (minister.edu@ontario.ca) 416-325-2600
Health Minister Christine Elliot (christine.elliott@ontario.ca) 416-212-3831
Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams (dr.david.williams@ontario.ca) 416-212-3831
Your local Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) - find them here. (Scroll to “find my MPP”).
Marit Stiles, Opposition Critic for Education (NDP) (MStiles-QP@ndp.on.ca) 416-326-7202
Nancy Naylor, Deputy Minister of Education (nancy.naylor@ontario.ca) 416-325-2600
Helen Angus, Deputy Minister of Health (helen.angus@ontario.ca)
ALL EMAILS TO COPY & PASTE: premier@ontario.ca, minister.edu@ontario.ca, christine.elliott@ontario.ca, dr.david.williams@ontario.ca, MStiles-QP@ndp.on.ca, nancy.naylor@ontario.ca, helen.angus@ontario.ca, ***don’t forget to add your MPP’s email!***
WRITE and/or CALL your local school board administration!
To find your school board, click here.
SHARE with your fellow parent friends. Strength in numbers!
TEMPLATE for your emails/calls
(note: form letters like the one below get less attention than personal letters. You can be brief! If this template makes the difference between not emailing/calling and emailing/calling, then use it. But if you can write your own, all the better. Polite & concise works!).
Dear Premier Ford, Minister Lecce, [your MPP], Minister Elliot, Dr. Williams, MPP Stiles, Ms. Naylor and Ms. Angus:
I am the parent of [child 1, age X], [child 2, age X], [child 3, age X], etc. I work [full time/part-time/inside the home/outside the home]. We have been struggling for the past three+ months to cope with the COVID-19 crisis. [Add a line or two describing your experience and how it has impacted your children]. I am incredibly disappointed by the lack of leadership and thought that has gone into forcing the school boards to make decisions about the return to school in September.
Premier Ford, you have said repeatedly throughout this pandemic that keeping kids safe is your priority. You have said that you rely on medical advice to make decisions during this pandemic. Medical experts, including those at Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto, are recommending that children in Ontario attend school full time. Keeping kids safe includes their physical, emotional and mental health. Children in Ontario have a right to attend school, safely, full time.
Proposing a part-time model begs the question: what are parents supposed to do with the other three days of the week their children are not in school? They will find childcare in other areas—hiring babysitters, nannies, bubbling with other families—making containment and contact tracing a nightmare.
School boards were already struggling with insufficient resources and are now going to have to double their efforts with half the resources.
If you want to reboot the economy, you MUST resolve this issue for our children. Use the incredible experts and their ideas you have at your disposal to get kids SAFELY back to school—five days a week. Think outside the box. Look at how other countries who have succeeded on this issue. Consider that childcare has been available for essential workers—exposed to the disease on a daily basis in some cases—on a full-time basis for months and have not presented any significant contributions to the pandemic.
Please, please reconsider your proposed options. The economy depends on it. Part-time attendance in school with online learning is not an acceptable plan.
Sincerely,
[Your name]