Manitoba teachers welcome public education funding, but say more is needed

Manitoba teachers are addressing what they call inadequate funding in public school education in a meeting with the province.

The Manitoba Teachers’ Society says in the last five to six years, funding increases have fallen well behind the rate of inflation and the rate of student growth.

“Teachers need to know that things will get better in a year’s time, in five years’ time, in 10 years’ time. I think we all have that expectation,” said MTS president James Bedford.

The Ministry of Education touted its recent funding increase for the education sector.

“Our government increased funding to the K-12 education system by $460 million in the 2022/2023 school year,” said Minister of Education Wayne Ewasko in a statement.

“This is the largest funding the education sector has ever received.”

Bedford supports the increase but says it’s a response to the pandemic and a small solution to a larger problem.

“And I want to acknowledge, there’s federal money that’s gone in as well,” said Bedford. “But really what this money is doing is it’s making up in a small way for years and years of underfunding that we’ve seen in public education. So we’re seeing larger class sizes. We’re certainly seeing fewer resources getting into classrooms. We’re seeing ageing infrastructure that’s not being adequately maintained.”

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Bedford says that teachers are having to fill in the gaps.

“We’ve had situations where teachers are purchasing snacks for their students, teachers are purchasing school supplies for their classrooms. Teachers in some cases are developing their own curricula,” he said.

Bedford is encouraged that the government is reviewing the public education funding model but still has concerns surrounding the equity of funding distribution.

“When we see successful programming for students in our schools, we need to have sustainable funding for it going forward,” he said.