Fort Frances High School students protesting in front of Kenora-Rainy River MPP Greg Rickford's office
Classrooms expected to back to normal after some students across the Rainy River district walked out of class to protest the Ford government’s chances to education.
Fort Frances High School students took their protest to the front doors of Kenora-Rainy River MPP Greg Rickford’s constituency office.
Grade 11 student Cassidy Martin says schools need more resources, not less.
“All across Ontario he’s cutting fund and he’s just hurting everybody by doing so and putting a prince on our future and that’s just not right,” says Martin.
Others, like grade 10 student William Richards is worried about the move to e-learning courses.
“Teachers that are gonna be supervising it but they won’t know anything about the project or whatever so the kids are gonna have no clue what they’re doing,” says Richards. “In my house, I don’t really have access to computers so it definitely would affect me.”
Grade 11 student Kennedy Gosselin is hopeful they can make a difference.
“We can sure try that’s all you can do,” says Gosselin. “A lot of kids are trying to protest and spread the awareness of what it can do for the programs across the school.”
A similar walk-out also took place in Rainy River.
Yesterday’s demonstration was monitored by both OPP and school board officials.
An official told CFOB News that it’s not expected students who took part will receive any disciplinary action.
A message sent to parents indicated students who walked out of school were marked absent in any class they missed.
The Board says it respects the students right to advocate and staff would be willing to discuss ways of doing so while remaining in school.
At the legislature, Premier Doug Ford is hurling insults at Ontario teachers in the wake of yesterday’s student walk-outs.
Ford says the teachers should be keeping the students in class instead of letting them skip school to protest.
This isn’t about class sizes, I’ll tell you; this is about the union bosses telling the teachers and the students what to do. Our teachers have a responsibility to the parents and they have a responsibility to the students to make sure that they stay in the classrooms and teach the students.
It’s estimated that as many as 700 thousand students participated in the province-wide demonstrations.
