McGuinty brags about clean energy plan

Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty toured the new high-skills training facility at Algonquin College Tuesday touting the province’s clean energy plan.

“We are building on the skills and education of our greatest asset — our people. Right here at Algonquin College, students are training for the jobs of tomorrow which will grow our clean energy economy and help Ontario compete with the world,” said McGuinty.

The 190,000 sq. ft. facility opened last month and houses all construction and related design programs such as plumbing, carpentry, and interior design.

“This building itself is a lab,” said Ottawa West Nepean MPP Bob Chiarelli, the minister of infrastructure, adding the local construction industry helped raise $10 million for the facility.

“It was a community initiative.”

Chiarelli said the facility will be used to teach “existing people in the workforce how to build green.”

Newly re-elected Liberal MPPs Yasir Naqvi and Phil McNeely were also on hand.

McGuinty reiterated he’s focused on job creation and the economy.

The province created 97,700 net new jobs in 2011.

http://www.ottawasun.com/2011/11/01/mcguinty-brags-about-clean-energy-plan

Remembrance symposium cancellation irks vet

SEE VIDEO http://www.ottawasun.com/2011/11/01/remembrance-symposium-cancellation-irks-vet

The 20th anniversary of an educational Remembrance Day event is being cancelled at a west Ottawa Catholic high school after the teacher organizing it was told “no tanks or guns” are allowed in the school.

Notre Dame High School history teacher Gene Michaud sent an e-mail to friends last Friday, sadly announcing the end of the Remembrance Day Symposium — shocking many in the military community.

“There’s a huge difference between some kid with a grudge bringing a weapon that’s loaded into a school, and veterans putting on a Remembrance display with non-functioning historical replicas,” said Wayne Mac Culloch, a retired major who spent more than 40 years in the Canadian Forces, including five missions overseas.

“What we’ve got going on here is a warped perspective of no weapons in schools.”

Mac Culloch often speaks at the annual Veterans Week event, which was set for Nov. 10 this year, and says he’s astounded by the new rule.

“We’re not talking tanks — we’re talking a cargo truck, Jeep, things you or I could actually own,” he said.

“If I can drive this thing on a city street, what is the objection of the school board?”

Replicas from museums are usually brought in, “but certainly, there’s nothing that you can operate,” said Mac Culloch.

Grade 11 student Carrington Pilon said he’s “shocked to find out it’s being cancelled because it’s such a great thing that our school does to get everyone involved to remember them. Just being in the same room as them is such an honour,” said Pilon.

Kiara Cullum, 16, first took part in the event four years ago.

“They did have one station where there’s replicas of guns and different things,” said Cullum.

“They had the uniforms that they wore and we were actually allowed to try them on, so it was really cool.”

Cullum said students will be “disappointed” because they love interacting with veterans.

This year’s event would’ve included those who served in Afghanistan.

An Ottawa Catholic School Board spokeswoman downplayed the cancellation, chalking it up to a decision made by an internal committee.

“The committee decided they wanted to change direction of the symposium,” said Lauren Rocque.

“The co-ordinator, he didn’t like the way that it was going, so he resigned.”

Rocque said she doesn’t know the man’s name or when he stepped down.

Michaud tried taking the event to a public school but also got rejected.

“We do not allow weapons in our schools for any reason,” said Ottawa Carleton District School Board spokeswoman Sharlene Hunter.

Ministry of education spokesman Gary Wheeler says schools are obligated to hold Remembrance Day services, but “decisions relating to what type of items are to be brought onto school property fall within the discretion of the school board.”

Mac Culloch isn’t impressed with either board.

“If those in our education system can’t make the distinction, I personally would have to question their professionalism,” he said.

“If we’re going to misrepresent our history, what lessons are we really going to learn?”

kelly.roche@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @ottawasunkroche

OTTAWA CATHOLIC SCHOOL BOARD WEAPONS POLICY:

1. The Board shall not tolerate the use, threat of use, or possession of weapons or replicas thereof by any unauthorized person on its property or in buildings or at Board-sponsored activities. The Board shall not tolerate the presence of weapons or replicas thereof in lockers, schoolbags, handbags, vehicles,or in any other place on its property. The Board adopts the following definitions of weapon:

1. Anything used, designed to be used, or intended for use in causing death or injury to any person;

2. Anything used, designed to be used, or intended for use for the purpose of threatening or intimidating any person;

3. Any knife;

4. Anything that is declared to be a prohibited or restricted weapon by the Criminal Code of Canada (e.g., knives with blades that open automatically by gravity or centrifugal force or by hand pressure applied to a button spring or other device in or attached to the handle of the knife; pepper spray or any noxious substance, tear gas, tazer stun guns, nanchaku, brass knuckles, spiked wristbands, finger rings with sharp or raised projections, etc.);

5. Any barreled weapon from which any shot, bullet, or other projectile can be discharged and that is capable of causing serious bodily injury or death to a person, and includes any frame or receiver of such a barreled weapon and anything that can be adopted for use as a firearm;

6. Any device which can propel a projectile, i.e., slingshot, compound bow, crossbow, paintball gun, etc.;

7. Any explosive device or the materials used for making an explosive device

Students pan planned U-pass price hike

SEE VIDEO http://www.ottawasun.com/2011/10/31/students-pan-planned-u-pass-price-hike

Two zombies strategically place six tombstones in front of an OC Transpo bus then hit the ground, playing dead.

Dozens of Carleton University students getting off buses and trains do double-takes Monday, smiling as they read some of the signs: “RIP Affordable Transit,” “Here Lies A Student Suffocated In A Bus,” “RIP U-PASS $145.”

“It’s basically a quirky way of having a Halloween action but also raising awareness around the fact that OC Transpo wants to raise the cost of the U-pass by $70 without what we feel is substantial financial evidence,” said Chantle Beeso, vice president of student issues at the Carleton University Students’ Association.

With escalating fuel prices, city council heard last Wednesday, transit fares are set to rise by an average of 2.5% come July 2012. The exact hike will vary by fare class and type.

The $180-per-semester U-pass price tag would begin in September “if there was a ‘yes’ vote in a referendum question,” said Beeso, adding the student vote would likely be around February.

The mandatory pass serves full-time students at Carleton and the University of Ottawa, who now pay $145 whether they walk, bike, drive or ride the bus to campus.

“Students are quite infuriated, based on the fact that we’ve had so many cuts and there have been so many changes,” said Beeso.

These include slashing routes 4 and 117, which served many students.

Buses are overcrowded and often behind schedule, say riders.

“It’s crowded, everyone’s late for class,” said third-year film student Ruty Skvirsky.

Transit commission member and Gloucester-South Nepean Coun. Steve Desroches said students shouldn’t be haggling with the city over the cost of the pass, which he believes was underpriced to begin with.

“I think that the world without the U-pass will be much more expensive than one with it,” he said. “We need to be moving towards full cost recovery.”

@ottawasunkroche

College support staff heading back to work

Students at Algonquin College are relieved an 18-day strike by support staff is over, restoring access to financial aid, registration, daycare, and Internet service.

“I couldn’t access my courses (online) during school,” said student Jonathan Anglin, 20.

So he had to go home to check his coursework.

“If there’s an assignment up that I needed to look up at school so that I could prepare for it, I couldn’t,” he said.

Roughly 8,000 support staff at Ontario colleges will return to work Tuesday.

“Today is a win for everyone in the colleges,” said Brian Costantini, president of the College Student Alliance, in a statement.

A tentative agreement was reached between the Ontario Public Service Employees Union and the College Employers Council late Sunday.

Bojan Totic, 23, says he’s glad the Internet will be finally be running.

“The networks are really congested,” said the computer systems technician student.

For the last two weeks, that meant downloading an operating system and waiting up to two hours instead of the normal 30 minutes.

“Students can now go back to school knowing that their college will be fully operational, and the services essential to them will be accessible,” said Costantini.

“The college experience that so many have waited for is finally here.”

The details of the agreement won’t be released until after a ratification, which hasn’t been scheduled.

The CSA represents 15 colleges and 23 member councils with more than 130,000 full-time student members in Ontario.

@ottawasunkroche

http://www.ottawasun.com/2011/09/19/college-support-staff-heading-back-to-work

 

Trustee cries foul over school funding fairness

Another school year means another fight for money, according to one public school board trustee, who’s calling on Ottawa’s provincial election candidates to commit to fair and equal funding for all students.

“There doesn’t appear to be any political will to fix it,” said John Shea, who represents Orleans-Cumberland in the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.

The ministry of education uses a funding formula to calculate how much money is given to each board, based on student enrolment, the number of schools, their distribution and physical condition, among other factors.

Shea said the board “continually receives phone calls” from parents who are upset about transportation issues.

Referring to numbers comparing all four boards in Ottawa, Shea said the French public board receives almost double the transportation grants its English public counterpart gets.

Both Catholic boards also receive more money than the OCDSB.

But Ottawa-Orleans MPP Phil McNeely says the province has increased funding “even with declining enrolment,” by 34% since 2003, giving $215M to the OCDSB and $845M to boards province-wide.

“Education has been a pillar in our government,” McNeely said.

Shea says the McGuinty government “has earned an F when it comes to ensuring that public school students are funded at the same level as their Catholic and French counterparts,” a statement McNeely dismisses as “pretty radical and not reflective of the overall support.”

Overall support is something PC candidate Andrew Lister is hoping for come election day.

Lister, who’s running against McNeely, said his youngest daughter attends English public school while his eldest daughter is in the French public board.

“There’s quite a discrepancy (in funding),” said Lister.

On the other hand, NDP candidate Doug McKercher wrote in an e-mail, “school board trustees have not contacted me to make their case either, so I haven’t had an opportunity to get more information.”

And Tanya Gutmanis from the Green Party said she was waiting to hear her party’s “stance on this issue,” but did not respond in time for deadline.

There’s just over three weeks left until election day.

@ottawasunkroche

http://www.ottawasun.com/2011/09/12/trustee-cries-foul-over-school-funding-fairness

Rising enrolment means two new French Catholic schools

SEE VIDEO http://www.ottawasun.com/2011/06/15/rising-enrolment-brings-two-new-french-catholic-high-schools

Rising enrolment has forced the McGuinty government to pay for two new schools for the French Catholic school board.

“For September, I think we are getting approximately 500 more students already,” said Diane Doré, chair of the Conseil des écoles catholiques du Centre-Est.

“We’re probably going to reach the 20,000 students (mark) in September or the next year.”

Four new schools are coming to west Ottawa — two elementary in Barrhaven and two high schools in Kanata.

Three of them are in French boards.

The announcement was made in Nepean Wednesday by Minister of Education Leona Dombrowsky, who stressed the importance of investing in infrastructure.

“As we build new buildings, we do expect to see efficiencies with better windows, better heating systems, and so on, so it could be a cost savings for the board over the long term,” said Dombrowsky.

The timeline for the project is three years.

Overall, the province is investing $650 million to build 43 schools and expand 30 others.

As well roughly $2.6 million will be spent on an addition to Laurier-Carriere — an elementary school in Nepean — for six classrooms.

Out of 350 students at Laurier-Carriere, 60 are in portables.

Ottawa-West Nepean MPP Bob Chiarelli said other boards in the area have declining enrolment.

“For some reason, the Francophone schools have tremendous demands -they’re very, very overcrowded and they need significant upgrades or new schools. We’re responding to that,” he said.

The ministry received funding applications from all four boards in Ottawa and almost every school board in Ontario.

Playground goes under school’s wheels

The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is paving a playground — that parents spent years raising money for — to put up a staff parking lot in Hintonburg.
Cars parked at Devonshire Public School on Breezehill Ave. N. near Somerset St. W. have been ticketed for illegally parking along the front fence of the school’s yard, according to a letter addressed to parents by principal Deborah Kuffner.
The school was notified Thursday and the letter was sent home that afternoon.   Work for the 2,000 sq. ft. 10-space-lot began first thing Friday morning — much to the dismay of parents.
“We can’t afford for the kids to lose another inch,” said Kelly Serjeantson, whose three children attend Devonshire.
A crew was seen removing a chain-link fence as well as a picnic table and two tetherball poles, which the school council paid $10,000 for about five years ago.
But the crew stopped working two hours later.
The school board will make up for the loss of playground space with room in front of the school, said Kuffner’s letter.
“The expected result is that there would be no overall loss of playground space for our children,” wrote Kuffner.
“We totally support the solution,” said co-chair Joanne Astorga.
But this isn’t the first time the kids have had to suffer.
A basketball court was already annexed to make spots for a few cars, Astorga said.
“Devonshire kids play on an L-shaped court,” she said. “It’s extremely disheartening.”
Many kids live in high-rise apartments.
“Their playground at school is the only backyard they have,” said Astorga.
Parents have set up a Facebook group called “Devonshire Kids Not Cars.”
The OCDSB could not be reached for comment.

http://www.ottawasun.com/2011/05/13/playground-goes-under-schools-wheels

Province cuts red tape on student loans

SEE VIDEO http://www.ottawasun.com/news/ottawa/2011/01/24/17018636.html#/news/ottawa/2011/01/24/pf-17016371.html

The province is trying to make student loans easier to get.

Ontario Student Assistance Program applications will now be available Feb. 1 instead of May; there’s a new academic credit transfer system; and interest on loans will be waived for the first six months after graduation.

John Milloy, the provincial minister for training, colleges and universities, made the announcement at Algonquin College Monday.

“The less money I have to pay after I graduate, the better,” said paramedic student Jean-Marc Bradshaw.

Students can also keep more of they money they earn — about $100 a week — without it affecting their funding.

“I would’ve liked to see those changes beforehand because I did work a lot more and they did deduct a lot more from how much they were supposed to give back to me,” said Roblay Obzk, a police foundations student.

Obzk is graduating this year and won’t get to benefit from it.

“It’s too late but at least it’s good for other people,” he said.

There’s also an app for the application itself.

Students will be able to check their loan status on smartphones.

“The old-fashioned paper trail has worked fine for me so far. I don’t need another app to confuse me,” said Bradshaw.

kelly.roche@sunmedia.ca

Kindergarten cash crunch might send teachers off site

SEE VIDEO http://www.ottawasun.com/news/ottawa/2010/12/02/16405836.html

Sending kindergarten teachers to off-site daycares could be the solution if the public school board isn’t given enough money from the province to renovate or build new schools to accommodate the third round of Ontario’s full-day kindergarten program.

So says the former chair of the Ottawa Carleton district school board.

“We haven’t heard from the ministry yet how much money will come with that rollout,” said OCDSB trustee Cathy Curry.

The board needs at least $5 million for the third year of the Early Learning Program.

The ministry of education’s website lists 45 schools in Ottawa which will be offering full-day kindergarten in the next few years.

About half of them began the program last September.

Curry said at the end of the next rollout the board will add 15 more — and with 120 schools in total, that’s only halfway through.

Six new classrooms cost roughly $5 million to build, and Curry said that’s why funding for 2012-2013 is a concern.

A spokesman for the ministry said the final sites for year three will be announced in the spring, and then the board will receive money to retrofit or build classrooms.

“Adding on double the number of kindergarten rooms will mean that potentially we’ll have to build new schools. That’s $12 million,” she said.

A possible solution, Curry said, is keeping kids at off-site daycares and sending teachers there to join the early childhood educators already running the programs — if the provincial government is open to the idea.

And at least one major childcare centre is on board.

“We’ve stated our interest in working with the ministry and the OCDSB,” said Terry MacIver, executive director of the Children’s Place, adding the response has been positive.

Curry said assistant deputy minister Jim Grieve helped set up the Kanata research park family centre, which has been running early learning this way for 12 years.

Around 1,000 people are on the family centre’s waiting list.

But the McGuinty government is aiming for seamless childcare where kids are dropped off and picked up at the same location, and that may not happen if teachers are sent out to daycares.

Curry said she hopes the ministry offers the board some flexibility.

“Full day kindergarten is being phased in over a five-year period to allow for the capital investments that are needed to accommodate all students in schools,” said ministry spokesman Gary Wheeler.

The Catholic school board isn’t commenting on funding for the program until further details are released.

kelly.roche@sunmedia.ca

Kindergarten cash crunch might send teachers off site

Student unions hiding their spending habits: Carleton

Almost two weeks after student unions filed papers to take the school to court for holding onto their money, Carleton administration is alleging student unions are holding back details about their spending habits.

“They allege to have been made available to their members but not the university,” said Jason MacDonald, the university’s director of communications.

The Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) and the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) cried foul after the school’s board of governors voted recently to keep their money — which is collected from 26,000 students when they pay tuition.

About $7 million was acquired and there’s $3 million left after doling out health and dental plans.

The unions need $2 million to run their businesses and services on campus, and the school said they aren’t releasing the money until they see audited financial statements.

GSA president Kimalee Phillip said the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) published its finances last week in the campus newspaper, the Charlatan, and GSA’s numbers will be in Thursday’s issue.

Phillip said they’re not conceding to the administration.

“We’re not accountable to them but we’re going to put it in the newspaper and give it to our members. We have no problem with that,” she said.

The school’s audit and finance committee meets on Thursday and Phillip said students will be at the board meeting next Monday.

kelly.roche@sunmedia.ca

http://www.ottawasun.com/news/ottawa/2010/11/23/16278986.html