Will Doug Ford use logic or hysteria when making educational decisions for Ontario's youth?

• By Tamara Ugolini

PETITION: Let Our Kids Go Back To Class

Ontario students who suffered from the devastating effects of school closures due to government-mandated COVID restrictions will be locked out of their classrooms again as the education workers' union announces a strike. If you agree that kids must remain in the classroom, sign this petition.

9,692 signatures
Goal: 12,000 Signatures

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Ontario students have faced in-person disruptions to learning longer than any other province in all of Canada. In this National Post article, “Ontario Premier Doug Ford may well be responsible for more lost school days than any other head of government on the planet.”

After two-plus years of solid data, we know that school closures cause more harm than good by many factors such as learning gaps. Referred to as the shadow pandemic, it’s the extreme mental and emotional fallout that these policies and closures will have on children that we cannot even begin to comprehend. That’s why I launched a petition and email campaign to get kids Back To Class. Parents, educators, and students are fed up and someone needs to give children – those whom school closures harm the most – a voice that preventing in-person learning is not a sound fallback policy.

Why does Premier Doug Ford think otherwise? Why is the "science" always different in Ontario?

Perhaps it’s the highly politicized unions. Early in May 2021, Ford mentioned during a press conference that unions were going to file injunctions against him if he reopened schools. At least two unions snapped back and denied the claim that it was their posturing that was responsible for keeping schools closed.

But could that have been reality? In this letter sent to Premier Ford by various teacher’s unions on December 31, 2021, they urged him to reduce class sizes to promote physical distancing, immediately fulfill the school boards non-fit-tested N95 mask orders, promote vaccination, and add COVID-19 to the list of designated diseases to mandate the injection under the Immunization of School Pupils Act (ISPA).

The various unions also demand that the Premier implement other community-based infection and prevention control measures… which isn’t at all within their jurisdiction to do.

In spite of this, the Ontario Families Coalition has retained a lawyer to challenge the constitutionality of school closures.

Will Doug Ford cater to the whims of endless union requests whose own members say that they’ve never been polled or asked for their opinion, or the group of concerned parents ready to challenge his constitutionally questionable closure orders?