Editor’s note: Michael Bator, director of education for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board , retired this month after 34 years as teacher, principal, superintendent and director. He offers below a reflection on what Catholic education has meant to him.

{mosimage}TORONTO - This summer Fr. Henry Carr Catholic Secondary School is moving a few blocks south to Doomstown — to the corner of the street where 19- year-old Jose Hierro Saez was gunned down June 3 in another case which pits police seeking leads against a community too afraid to break the code of silence. Doomstown is the local nickname for Jamestown, the neighbourhood off Martin Grove Road south of Finch Avenue, and one of Toronto’s poorest and most violent.

{mosimage}MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - For the first time since Ontario’s Catholic schools received full funding in 1984, a publicly funded Catholic school is going private.

{mosimage}TORONTO - As Mass ended under bright sunshine outdoors and teacher-librarian Kathryn Zaleski-Cox announced St. Brigid’s Elementary School had made the grade as an Ontario EcoSchool, a cheer went up. For the 580 students of east-end Toronto’s St. Brigid’s Elementary, their teachers and two dozen parents participating in the May 17 Mass, they weren’t just cheering for something students had accomplished with a year’s worth of litterless lunches, reduced energy consumption and heightened ecological awareness. The cheer also recognized prayers answered.

If C1+ reminds you of a mediocre grade you got in high school chemistry, that’s because you weren’t paying attention in French class either.

Editor’s note: The following is a position paper produced by the Catholic Civil Rights League on “The question of Catholic school funding.” 

As Ontario prepares for an election in October, several groups are trying to raise the question of continued funding for the province’s Catholic elementary and secondary schools. Some claim that all publicly funded schools would be operated more efficiently if there was one, non-sectarian system, with school boards drawn geographically and, in most localities, in French or English streams. Several public school boards have already passed resolutions to this effect.

It’s not politics as usual at the Halton Catholic District School Board. A divided board in the region to Toronto’s west has voted non-confidence in the chair and vice chair voted in just four months ago.

TORONTO - Six Ontario public school boards have passed motions calling for abolition of publicly funded Catholic education and that has Rick Johnson a little upset and embarrassed.

TORONTO - About 500 Catholic parents, pastors and teachers in Toronto staked a claim on the future of Catholic schools in the last of a province-wide series of consultations by the Institute for Catholic Education seeking community insight into future directions for Catholic education in Ontario.

TORONTO - The average full-time elementary school teacher in Ontario’s Catholic system is putting in a 55.7-hour work week, and what counts as a part-time teaching job averages 36.8 hours per week, according to a new study commissioned by the teachers’ union.