Random Access

Well, looks like the "Education Premier" is back.
Dalton McGuinty splashed down at Roberta Bondar Public School this morning to deliver $309 million over two years to right some of the wrongs of the funding formula — yes, the same one he said he would fix while he was on the hustings in 2003.
Nothing like a little last-second space walk to slap a few patches on the thermal shield of the shuttle Endeavour Re-Election.
Now we will have to see if the old bucket of bolts can withstand re-entry to earth's blogosphere.
Most election promises do tend to burn up when they are exposed to the oxygen that the rest of us breathe at ground level anyway.
McGuinty brought his "Be Happy — I’m Still Not Mike Harris" act to Peel to tout the strides he's made towards reversing the damage that was inflicted by the one-size-fits-all funding formula, which really, really hurt urban boards like the Peel District and the Dufferin-Peel Catholic boards.
Together the two boards will get nearly $20 million in new money. That should be enough to ease the reins of Dufferin-Peel Board out of the hands of Norbert Hartmann and put them back into the hands of the people Catholic ratepayers elected last November to run it. Which is generally a good thing.
The $12 million set aside to deal with the ongoing saga of transportation subsidies that don’t cover the real cost of busing sounds good, until you figure out that is for the whole province and the Peel District alone estimated it was $11 million in the hole a year ago at this time. (Peel got $2.9 million more and Dufferin-Peel $1.8 million more after an initial review earlier this year.)
The government press release states that, "For 2008-09, an additional $127 million will be provided to further strengthen the funding formula by better matching funding with current actual costs. This investment will focus on additional areas that boards have identified, such as English-as-a-Second-Language, school board operations, non-salary compensation, schools in areas of local growth, adult education and local priorities."
That sounds like good news for our boards which have major growth issues in the north and limited ability to provide the ESL programs that new arrivals need and deserve.
Do you suppose that when the Peel Board decided to open an elementary school for year-round (Bondar) schooling that trustees envisioned that it would make a great backdrop to host political announcements in the summer when most schools are closed? Do we get a credit for that in the funding formula?
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Did anybody else notice that the Politicians' Appreciation Day hosted by the Mississauga Board of Trade last week was under-appreciated, to put it mildly, by the business community and the public? There were almost as many politicians there as residents. And Mayor Hazel McCallion was the only member of City council who attended.
Next year, to make the politicians feel better, the Board will probably combine the event with Lawyers' Appreciation Day and Media Appreciation Day.
The big question: will attendance go up or down?