Candidate Endorsements
Catherine has been endorsed as a candidate by Together for Education, an organization of Teachers in Waterloo Region, and by the Waterloo Region Labour Council. For information on these endorsements please click here.
Ottawa Citizen – October 24, 2010
“Elections can be a really good time to educate people.” Whether it’s closing schools or rolling out full-day kindergarten, trustees are the local voices who put provincial directives on education into action. Schools are central to neighbourhoods and communities, and Fife said that makes the people elected to run them worth watching.,”Local trustees, as a collective, carry a lot of influence on the health and well-being of the community,” Fife said.
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Toronto Star – October 22, 2010
Catherine Fife, who heads the Ontario Public School Boards Association said “The good news is that boards are not as homogeneous as they once were, but there’s still a long way to go,” she said. “We’re all in agreement that a diversity of ages and cultures needs to be at the table to best represent the community.”
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CBC Radio
Click here to listen to Catherine on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning
Toronto Sun
The fundamental difference is education is not an industry in Ontario, it’s a value,” said Catherine Fife, OPSBA’s president. As stressed by Fife and PFE’s Annie Kidder, Ontario does do well and significantly better than the U.S. in the last international test known as PISA (and by gum, if there weren’t tests how would we know?).”
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Toronto Star
Catherine Fife, president of the Ontario Public School Boards Association, says many of the elements of the reforms he is proposing are “punitive in nature” — an approach also cited in the film — which she says doesn’t suit Canadians.
“The U.S. system is becoming very punitive; that’s how they want to motivate schools. I met an Ohio educator at a conference recently whose school lost out on $1.2 million in funding because they wouldn’t fire the principal for not raising test scores enough in his first two years,” said Fife.
“But what you need to do in a case like that is go in and find out why it’s not doing very well, and also give it time to turn things around.”
(…)
Fife said Waiting for Superman has a “disaster-film quality about it and you have to watch not to compare it with Canada because our achievement gap is so much smaller.”
Fife and Kidder both note the film blames schools for an academic achievement gap that reflects a much wider poverty gap in the U.S. that has neither a public health system nor such robust social services.
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Trustee Fife makes Active Community Pledge
Dear Candidate,
Thank you for taking the time to add your name to the Active Communities Pledge and declare your commitment to building a bicycle friendly community! As I am sure you are aware, throughout Ontario there is growing public awareness of the benefits of cycling, and growing voter support for bike friendly initiatives by local governments.
Share the Road has added your name to our list of bike friendly politicians, which you can view at www.sharetheroad.ca. As our list of endorsements grows we will continue to promote the campaign in communities across the province, drawing public attention to you and other candidates who have endorsed the Active Communities Pledge campaign.
If you have any questions, or if you would prefer not to have your name listed on the StR website, please feel free to contact me.
Once again, thank you for supporting the Active Communities Pledge Campaign.
All the best,
Eleanor McMahon
CEO
Share the Road Coalition