Care, Not Corporatization

This year on International Women’s Day, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) called for a worker-centred economic strategy that puts women’s economic justice at its core. Citing the affordability crisis that is affecting people across the country, the CLC highlighted how women, particularly those that work in the care economy, have been left to deal with the impacts of underfunding and an economic strategy that values profits over people.

In public education, this means that elementary educators, 81 per cent of whom are women, are struggling with almost insurmountable challenges at work, supporting students without the necessary tools and resources while dealing with violence, burnout and increasing demands to fill the gaps that chronic underfunding has deepened.

The evidence is damning. The Ontario Auditor General’s recent report on special education confirmed what ETFO members have been sounding the alarm about for years: students with special needs are waiting months – sometimes years – for critical assessments and are often receiving only inadequate supports, if any at all. And the burden falls hardest on children who need support most and are most marginalized. They also fall on the educators, predominantly women, who fight daily to meet increasingly complex needs with shrinking resources.

But underfunding is only part of the story. We are also witnessing a calculated, relentless power grab by the Conservative government.

Bill 33, the Supporting Children and Students Act, and Bill 101, the Better School and Student Outcomes Act, have stripped locally elected school board trustees of meaningful authority. Trustees have long been the democratic link between communities and decision-making power. Now, provincial appointees and ministerial directives override local voices. When communities lose the power to shape their own schools, we lose the ability to respond to local needs, local diversity, local dreams and voices.

And what replaces democracy? Corporate logic. We see the corporatization of education accelerating, most alarmingly in the recent appointment of CEOs who lack knowledge or experience in the public school system to replace directors of education. These CEOs talk about “efficiencies,” “streamlining,” and “performance metrics.” They treat students as data points and schools as service-delivery units. But a child is not a widget. A classroom is not an assembly line. And the purpose of education is not to produce compliant workers, it is to develop the next generation of engaged citizens and critical thinkers.

Public education is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. It is where young people learn to question, to imagine, to disagree respectfully, and to demand justice. When we run schools like big business, we teach children that profit matters more than people, compliance more than creativity, and conformity more than conscience. That is not the future Ontario’s children deserve.

Equity must be at the centre of our public education system – not as a slogan, but as a practice. That means fully funding special education, so no child is left waiting. It means restoring the authority of locally elected trustees. It means rejecting CEO-style governance in favour of educational leadership grounded in care, curriculum, and community. And it means finally recognizing that the care economy – dominated by women, sustained by women, too often dismissed because it is done by women – is not a cost to be minimized. It is the very foundation of a just society and must be valued as such.

With this summer women’s issue of Voice, we honour the women who hold our schools together. But we also demand investment. We demand democracy. And we demand that students and educators be treated like more than just a line item on a budget spread sheet. Because when we defund care, we compromise the next generation’s capacity to think, to question and to build a better world.

We have a challenging year ahead, but I am confident that together we will bargain collective agreements that support ETFO members and our students. I wish you a restful summer and look forward to organizing with you this fall.

– David Mastin