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by Laura Carney. See the original article at 570 News
Green Party of Ontario leader Mike Schreiner made a campaign stop in Waterloo Region Wednesday.
His visit comes on the same day as NDP Leader Andrea Horwath’s.
Schreiner joined, Kitchener-Waterloo Green Party candidate Stacey Danckert to discuss their party’s education policy, which focuses on the merger of the public and Catholic school boards.
Speaking with 570’s Gary Doyle, Schreiner says the McGuinty government is talking about cutting funding for education, slamming teachers and closing schools.
What Schreiner would like to see is a discussion about joining the public and catholic schools, “Can we create a fair and more financially responsible education system that improves quality in the classroom, putting our kids first, by looking at merging the public and catholic school boards, and that’s a discussion that we think needs to happen.”
Schreiner tells Doyle he doesn’t think eliminating the Catholic board will result in a lack of religious education, “There’s lots of opportunities for very specific and detailed education around religion…at home, at church, in the community. It doesn’t necessarily need to take place in the school at that specific level.”
He says there are other options to save money, rather than just making significant funding cuts to education and adds some studies have shown the province could save between 1.2 and 1.6 billion dollars by merging the two boards.