The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board's (HWDSB) public discussions to scrap public funding for the Catholic education system is disturbing. Trustee Barlow states, "There is nothing different between us and the Catholic system". The feedback we receive at our Council is in direct opposition to that statement.

The Catholic system is based on the teachings of Christ and centers around Biblical truths. Classrooms begin their day with teachers asking for prayer requests and praying with children regarding concerns which they hold to be dear. The students are encouraged to consider their Creator and His boundaries in all they do. The Catholic system recognizes that all persons are made up three domains; body, mind and spirit and that you cannot train one domain without affecting the other two. The public system as a whole, will not permit God in the classroom and fought to remove Christian fellowship clubs from the lunch hour. They have replaced Him with Humanism, Relativism and Environmentalism and are now bent on using the elementary classroom to unlearn children regarding sexuality by affirming homosexuality, bi-sexuality and transgenderism as harmless societal norms while dismissing medical evidence. In fact, the difference between the two systems is like night and day, with the Catholic system being the day.

Trustee English is afraid that the Catholic Board may see this as hostile but fortunately, Trustee Brennan calms these fears by declaring the HWDSB trustees as warriors for the cause; nothing hostile about warriors. The reality in this is that families, whether declaring themselves Catholic or not, are fleeing the Godless humanist schools in preference for Christ-centered classrooms in keeping with His teachings. HWDSB had opportunity to run similar program with alternative classrooms which from our research indicated could have attracted at least 3,000 students and their families but chose to stay on the treadmill of Humanism resulting in further decline in enrolment.

Competition through choice in public education is healthy, unfortunately the current public trustees say, 'If you can't beat 'em , eliminate 'em'. I for one am thankful that no political party is intending to join these non-hostile warriors.

Jim Enos
Vice-president
Hamilton-Wentworth
Family Action Council