With a plan in place to fully implement Full Day Kindergarten (Daycare) into all Ontario schools by 2014 Daddy Dalton has forgotten to cater to the actual taxpayer paying for all this splendor of free daycare.
You see, all the schools at the beginning of the implementation of the full day kindergarten program are from lower class areas and rural Ontario schools.
Why? Because Daddy Dalton is buying votes with your tax dollars.
Dalton McGuinty is way behind in the polls and the majority of lost voters are not only in rural Ontario (which have always hated the Liberals) but also in the voter rich land of Toronto.
The middle and upper class have grown tired of paying for Dalton’s fiscal endeavors through wonderful taxes such as HST, Health Tax (premium) and of course our wonderful rising energy costs. Despite all these new taxes, the Liberals have run the province into a debt of catastrophic proportions and put Ontario into a “have-not” province status.
Full Day Kindergarten is aimed at two things; creating a legacy for Daddy Dalton to keep his goal of being the education premier and to get himself re-elected one final time.
The problem is, while implementing this taxpayer funded daycare Dalton forgot a few important points;
Hiring teachers – The average class in Toronto for kindergarten stands at 26 kids each with 30 kids in a classroom being fairly normal. To save money for this lavish program, Dalton has decided to just stuff kids into classrooms until the seams burst instead of actually hiring teachers to lessen the load. Even though a cap exists for grades 1-3 of 20 kids (most classes usually still over that number) there is no cap for kindergarten. If you are a parent, which age do you think needs more supervision a 4 year old who in some cases still can’t go to the bathroom on their own, or a 7 year old?
With classes so big, children aren’t learning anything – As noted in a previous story, the Ontario Day Nurseries act regulates private daycare and has limits of 1 Early Childhood Educator (ECE) per 8 -10 children under the age of 5 which is all of junior kindergarten. That number increases to 1 ECE for every 12 children for senior kindergarten. Currently you have 1 teacher and 1 ECE in a classroom of 30 kids (1 per 15 children). In other words, Private institutions provide more adult supervision than your taxpayer funded Ontario school. If you don’t think that actually matters spend some time with a child from an all day kindergarten and a child that is either at a Montessori, or a private daycare…the differences in some children is astounding. More attention means more learning!
Yet by 2014, all children will be stuffed into kindergarten rooms across the province and have less supervision and direct teaching which can only mean one thing…this province is going to have a lot of stupid children!
By catering to the poor, the rich will boot you out! – It’s all great that the demographic that needs this full day kindergarten program is the lower income class which is getting all the area schools, but Dalton has angered parents in the middle income (what’s left of it) class who are working jobs to pay for daycare and may never even benefit from having any of their children in a full day kindergarten program because their area is last on the list of schools to get the full day designation. Offering full time kindergarten (daycare) to the lower class, some of whom are sitting at home collecting social assistance anyway makes less sense since they are the ones at home anyway.
Daddy Dalton has implemented this program “half-assed”! He never expanded schools for proper space, he has avoided hiring new teachers unless absolutely necessary to avoid expanding the costs of the Full Day Kindergarten (daycare) program leaving many qualified teachers heading out of province to find jobs because there just aren’t any teaching jobs left in Ontario. Worst of all, he has no money to pay for this and has borrowed heavily into the future to pay for it – a future that he may not even be a part of after October 6th (otherwise known as “kick Daddy Dalton out of power day”).
So let’s see, parents aren’t happy, at least not the ones that pay the bills for the provinces, teachers aren’t happy because they are inundated with children and new potential teachers are off to find alternate employment since Dalton isn’t giving them jobs, and yet there’s Daddy Dalton standing in a school announcing 900 more poor areas of the province to get free daycare.
Dalton, STOP SMILING, you have nothing to be happy about!
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[...] Full Day Daycare (Kindergarten) - Ahh the grand-daddy of all election vote buying. McGuinty took a theoretically good idea and in the midst of an economic recession implemented a plan that bought votes for low incomes households by taking their child away for a full day to learn. Originally the goal was to provide education for these students but critics have stated that this is just free daycare for low income households. Even their own Liberal website states that fact; “FDK is saving parents up to $6,500 per child per year in child care costs”. No mention about how making your children learn all day is beneficial, just simply that it will save you money. [...]