Andrea Horwath, Leader of the Official Opposition New Democrats, released the following statement in response to Premier Doug Ford\u2019s news conference Wednesday, in which he defended his decision to send kids back to school with regular, large class sizes for all primary school students and many high school students.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike many parents, teachers, educators and health experts, I was horrified today to hear Doug Ford dig in his heels and refuse to reconsider his plan to send kids back into jam-packed classes in September.<\/em><\/p>\n Thirty or more kids crammed into one small classroom wasn\u2019t ok before the pandemic when Mr. Ford was cutting teachers and education workers and hiking class sizes. Now, it\u2019s downright dangerous.<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m asking Mr. Ford to listen to the parents who are worried. Listen to the experts that say small class sizes are necessary to keep our kids safe.<\/em><\/p>\n Time is running out, but it\u2019s not too late. We need smaller, safer classes in September.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Andrea Horwath, Leader of the Official Opposition New Democrats, released the following statement in response to Premier Doug Ford\u2019s news conference Wednesday, in which he defended his decision to send …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":6313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 09:23:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35214,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35213\/revisions\/35214"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}