FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Rainbow District School Board plans to close eight public schools and gut educational programs starting in less than a year! This is despite a $3.6 million budget surplus, rising student enrollment rate, and mass uproar at their dishonest methods – like counting hallways as part of classrooms to fake ‘underutilized’ space to justify closing vital schools.
The Revolutionary Student Movement calls on all affected students and families, as well as teachers and other supporters, to join us for a rally and march on the School Board office against all cuts and closures! This is in lead-up to the announcement of the Board's final decision on February 7. Community groups are encouraged to bring your banners and signs. Share this event onFacebook and invite friends.
When: Tuesday, January 24, 3pm sharp.
Where: Plaza @ corner of Elm and Durham, downtown Sudbury.
What will it mean if we sit back and let the RDSB have their way? Overcrowding and understaffing all across the board. Massive drop in the quality of education. Lumping of elementary, middle and high school students into the same building. Absurdly long commutes to and from school, upwards of several hours each way in many cases. Slashing of French Immersion, Ojibwe classes and extracurricular programs.
And who bears the brunt of this assault? Students from low-income families without the resources to cope with the extra hardships and stress. Single parents who depend on after-school programs to balance work with childcare. At-risk youth and students with special needs who won't receive the counselling and support they need. Small rural communities that rely on local school infrastructure as community hubs outside school hours. Indigenous youth who will be displaced from their home communities in a way harking back to the residential school system.
And who benefits? The big real estate developers who will gobble up the land under the demolished schools for unaffordable condos. The Board who will waste the freed up funds for pointless expenses like their $7 million office building purchase, and to pad the personal projects of administrators. The well-connected construction firms who will get the contracts for new schools built just to take in displaced students from rural and working class areas where schools are torn down.
The highly paid officials and politicians pushing this agenda (not just in Greater Sudbury but all over the province) are only accountable to the financial bottom line, not to those who will suffer the most from their decisions. Their policies reflect only the needs of the capitalist system, where the people barely get by, while a powerful few and their stooges line their pockets.
This system is killing our futures! Against this attack, the only way forward for working class, Indigenous and marginalized communities is solidarity and struggle for a radically different education system that puts our needs at the forefront.
Unite and fight to defend our schools and future generations!
No cuts, no closures, no compromise!
The site for the Sudbury working-group of The Media Co-op has been archived and will no longer be updated. Please visit the main Media Co-op website to learn more about the organization.
The Sudbury working-group of The Media Co-op was formed to create independent media in the North, to speak to our issues and outlooks on our communities as well as the world around us. Independent media provides an avenue for people who are wishing to gain critical perspective on the issues that matter most to us, and to give a voice to those people and stories that you won't find in the mainstream media.
The Sudbury working-group site is no longer being updated and has been archived.