Water gushed through a burst ceiling pipe, flooding the hallway floor at Emery C.I. As students looked on, shivering in their winter coats, they couldn’t help but feel left out in the cold again.

“It was during an extreme cold weather alert,” Grade 12 student Eloghosa Ogiesoba said of the February incident. “We had to wait in the -20 C weather. Someone could have been seriously injured.”

The North York high school, near Weston Rd. and Finch Ave. W., has always appeared worn down, students say. The Toronto District School Board’s website lists several repairs, including piping, roof and ceiling repairs, on urgent priority for the school as the board faces a school repair backlog of $3.7 billion.

“Sad thing is that beautiful schools, like Earl Haig, exist in the same city,” Ogiesoba said. “How is cutting funding to education going to help us?”

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‘He wants resilience? We’ll show him resilience’: Teen organizers of Ontario’s student walkout on why they’re fighting Ford’s education cuts

Ontario students walk out of class to protest Ford’s education cuts — and the premier says they’re being used as pawns

Opinion | Don’t be distracted by the class size debate, it’s about programs

Last Thursday, about 150 Emery students joined an Ontario-wide walkout to protest Premier Doug Ford’s changes to education, including larger class sizes, 3,475 fewer teaching jobs in four years and mandatory e-learning in high school. The new Progressive Conservative government already cut a $100-million school repair fund in July.

With all the media attention, politicians showing up and supporters honking as they drove by, it was a rare moment that outsiders were finally listening to what students had to say. It also gave them an opening to highlight ongoing issues their school has been grappling with.

Ogiesoba, who has struggled financially growing up in a single-parent household, said the stereotype of being young, Black and from near Jane and Finch makes it even harder for many students at Emery to be heard. There’s a stigma that they don’t care about their education, Ogiesoba said, but that couldn’t be more wrong.

“We care. We care so much. Our immigrant families started with nothing, not one dollar. It’s why the faces in the factories aren’t particularly white, not unless you own it,” he said. “It’s not that we’re lazy or don’t care. It’s the opposite.”

During the #StudentsSayNo protest, the teens walked up Weston Rd. and were joined by their local NDP MPP, Tom Rakocevic, and Councillor Anthony Perruzza (Ward 7, Humber River-Black Creek).

“Emery has not been heard before in that way. It really empowers us. It just allows us to say, well, you know what, we do have a voice,” said Grade 12 student Yavuz Selim Topbas, who helped organize the walkout with Grade 11 students Sarah Rahim and Hannah McIntyre.

They started planning just two days before the protest, with Topbas reaching out to the politicians, and Rahim and McIntyre creating the @emery_saysno Instagram account and sticking up posters around the school to get the word out.

“It was inspiring to see these other students that felt as strongly as I did,” Rahim said. “I felt really proud.”

Emery students will especially feel the sting of the education cuts, Topbas said, because many come from working class backgrounds, and go through financial and other personal struggles that they find reprieve from at school.

“We need more than a teacher, we need a teacher-student relationship, because school is a safe space for us,” Topbas said. “The school is a place where we forget about our financial problems, we forget about our father being jobless, we forget about our mother being disabled.”

If a classroom is overcrowded as a result of class sizes jumping to an average of 28 students from 22, those student-teacher relationships will suffer, Topbas said.

“Every extra student lowers the amount of time an individual can have specific help from their teacher,” he said. “This might not affect students at the top, students who are already well off. But the students that need a helping hand; the teachers can’t help everyone.”

Ogiesoba added, “If you aren’t close with the teacher at Emery, or any school, it’s hard to excel, because the best teaching comes from one-on-one teaching, and people don’t necessarily have the time or money for a tutor.”

For her part, principal Maria Palermo said in an email to the Star, “At Emery C.I., we are committed to ensuring that every student can identify at least one caring adult on staff that they can connect with when they need support.”

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She said initiatives like the Caring Adult Program, mentorship initiatives and a variety of staff and student team-building events will continue “but, as in all schools, the key connections between staff and students are the ones that happen in classrooms every day.”

“Regardless of any possible cuts, we will be there for our students and support them to the best of our abilities,” Palermo said.

But classroom sizes weren’t the only education changes sending Emery students to the streets.

The median annual household income in Humber River-Black Creek was $53,518 in the 2016 census, compared to a $74,287 median for all Ontario residents. That reality coupled with Ford’s changes to the Ontario Student Assistance Program has some Emery students re-evaluating their post-secondary goals, said McIntyre.

Though tuition fees are set to drop by 10 per cent, the OSAP reforms would eliminate free tuition for lower-income students as well as the six-month grace period before interest is charged on loans after a student finishes a degree.

McIntyre said she’s already planning to look for part-time jobs so she can start saving up for university in 2020.

“If I started looking for a job right now, I wouldn’t be 100 per cent focused on school,” she said. “It stresses me out a little bit because I do want high marks, but I also need to prepare for university.”

Zenitha Temenu, in Grade 12, said, “Doug Ford finished high school, but he dropped out of college. How can somebody — and I say this in the most respectful way — who dropped out of college make policies for students that are in post-secondary?

“It’s not fair. And he’s also privileged so he doesn’t understand. I think he’s unqualified to make decisions like this,” Temenu said.

According to the Ministry of Education, there were more than 72,000 “engagements” during consultations on changes. Anyone in Ontario was able to participate through an online survey, open submission form, email submission or a telephone town hall.

Kayla Iafelice, a spokesperson for Education Minister Lisa Thompson, said in a statement to the Star that the changes to OSAP are part of the government’s plans to restore trust and accountability in Ontario’s finances.

“We have refocused the Ontario Student Assistance Program to make it sustainable for generations to come,” Iafelice said. “In fact, without any changes OSAP’s cost would have ballooned to $2.7 billion by 2023. That is more than double the expenses from 2017.”

OSAP was also brought up in a poignant letter written by an anonymous student that Rahim saw on Instagram.

“Dear Doug Ford,” the letter read. “My parents are abusive and I have recently gotten out of this abuse because OSAP gave me the option of controlling my own future. Now, I may have to get them to help me pay for university, which will then put them back in control of my finances and schooling.”

Rahim chose to read that letter aloud at her school’s rally because she thought it might resonate with some students at Emery.

“Honestly, a lot of teenagers face a lot of issues, like abusive parents, even maybe homelessness. Just like simple things that adults think don’t affect us that much,” she said.

That’s why it disappointed her so much when she heard the premier say students were being used by unions as “a bunch of pawns.”

“I felt belittled,” Rahim said. “Everyone I talked to was really passionate about these issues on their own terms and I think (Ford) needs to recognize that age has nothing to do with knowledge.”

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