Growing pains: Quebec schools bursting at the seams, buildings in terrible shape
MONTREAL — Over the summer with the kids away, construction crews have hastily been erecting temporary, metal-clad extensions to aging school buildings across Montreal, to help cope with ever-increasing enrolment.
A mini baby boom in the 2000s, increased immigration and a recent influx of refugees are putting enormous pressure on the education system in the city amid recent budget cuts and rapidly deteriorating school infrastructure.
Montreal’s public schools are bursting at the seams and, similarly to the highways and bridges across the province, the bill for decades of neglect has come due.
As the first week of the Quebec election campaign comes to end and as thousands of children return to school, teachers and their unions want the four main political parties to make a pledge: reinvest massively in education instead of dogmatically striving to balance the budget.