Toronto - April 13, 2007 - In response to the growing number of public school boards voting in favour of merging the public and Catholic school boards in Ontario, the Green Party of Ontario announced today that it supports a move toward a single school public system in Ontario, because the change would make better use of school resources and ultimately benefit students.

"Duplication wastes a lot of tax dollars and leaves fewer resources for students," says Frank de Jong, Leader of the Green Party of Ontario. "Manitoba, Quebec and, most recently, Newfoundland have moved away from separate schools and toward a single school board. It's time Ontario took similar steps to modernize its education system."

The current duplication of services and infrastructure in Ontario's school board model is expensive and inefficient. Serving all children under one system would realize significant savings, especially in sparsely populated rural areas and small towns.

"I recently visited the community of Shining Tree in Northern Ontario, where the Catholic school had eight children and the public school had six," de Jong says, "The administrative and operational costs to run two schools instead of one are enormous in cases like these."

The money saved with a single school board system would allow Ontario to better serve all children by providing the basic necessities of a proper education. Schools would be able to offer smaller classes, afford more textbooks, hire more teachers, in-school nurses and counsellors, and increase access to new physical and outdoor education programs, nutrition programs and many other services that most school boards can no longer afford.

"The Green Party of Ontario is in favour of current initiatives to eliminate separate publicly funded school systems because it's a step in the right direction," de Jong says. "We owe it to our children to provide them with the best education possible."

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