James Gordon writes in the Ottawa Citizen today about how Stittsville’s lack of a public high school illustrates a need to get rid of separate school boards. Here’s an excerpt:
Every so often, we get yet another reminder of just how absurd Ontario’s public school system is.
The latest flareup is in Stittsville — now 30,000 people strong after a 25 per cent bump in population since 2009 — where parents are agitating for the community’s first public high school after being ignored for the past decade or so by the Liberal government.
Well, the community’s first publicly funded, non-religious school, anyway. Stittsville is home to Sacred Heart Catholic school…
Sacred Heart is also over capacity already, because people actually want their kids to be able to walk or bike to a building in their own city. Those who wish to stay in the regular ol’ public system currently have to bus their kids down the highway to Richmond…
This is the choice Stittsville (and other) parents of all faiths and beliefs still have to make in Ontario in 2015: either surrender and send your children to learn under the symbols and auspices of a taxpayer-funded, faith-based administration … or send them to school in another town and quit whining.
It’s wrong, and it needs to change.
Even if Sacred Heart were a secular public school, which it should be, the Stittsville area would still be woefully under-serviced. Still, at least parents would have the option to send their children to an overcrowded neighbourhood school free of religious moral codes and intimidation.