A local education leader is pushing back at the province's announcement limiting cellphone use in classrooms, restricting access to all social media networks and banning vaping on school properties.
Ontario's education minister Stephen Lecce announced the measures on Sunday touting them as necessary steps to improve safety in schools and help students focus in class.
Kids in kindergarten to Grade 6 will be required to keep phones on silent and out of sight for the entire school day unless they get explicit permission from an educator, while those in grades seven and up will see cellphone use banned during class time.
Mario Spagnuolo, president of the Greater Essex County Teacher Local for the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) claims the announcement is nothing but a distraction from the cuts to the education budget.
Speaking on AM800's The Dan MacDonald Show, Spagnuolo says student cell phone restriction policies were announced in 2019 and are already in place.
"I'm staring at the Greater Essex County District School Board's admin procedures that were established in 2010. It's the exact same thing that he stated on Sunday. And I'll read it to you. It says 'Use of personal communication and computing devices is only permitted in school buildings or on school grounds during instructional time when permitted and supervised by a staff member for educational purposes."
Spagnuolo says a progressive discipline policy is currently in place that starts with a verbal warning, contact with a parent, confiscation of the device, detention, suspension and in extreme cases expulsion.
"We have parents that push back as well. Like 'how dare you take away the device of my child.' Is minister Lecce going to help us with parents that push back on that, or parents that are going to push for legal action if you confiscate somebody's personal devices."
He says when it comes to enforcement of the policies and when teachers identify a student who requires mental health supports, they don't have the needed staff.
"We don't have the social workers, we don't have the psychologists, we don't have the councillors that we need and in fact we're cutting. We're cutting more now than ever before under this minister's leadership. So it's frustrating. When teachers react they're like 'I'm not sure what more this minister wants us to do.' We're doing the best that we can with less and less supports from this government."
Spagnuolo claims since 2018, roughly $2.7 billion in cuts have been made to the education budget.
He says locally, there has been a reduction in elementary special education teachers starting this fall.
"The school board has done that in September. So the minister is talking about a cellphone ban starting in September, I'll talk about a special education cut starting in September. There will be 22 fewer teachers in our schools, in our public elementary schools, to service students with special needs. That to me is the real issue."
-With files from The Canadian Press