Michael Swan, The Catholic Register

Michael Swan, The Catholic Register

Michael is Associate Editor of The Catholic Register.

He is an award-winning writer and photographer and holds a Master of Arts degree from New York University.

Follow him on Twitter @MmmSwan, or click here to email him.

TORONTO - Despite a provincial report which recommends ways for the Toronto Catholic District School Board to erase $34.9 million in red ink, trustees are hoping to dodge cuts by playing for time until the spring provincial budget.

The Jolly Green Giant used to urge us all to "Look up, look waaay up." The Toronto Catholic District School Board is looking up into the air above some of it's old, crumbling and underpopulated schools and hoping to see some new money.
TORONTO - The average full-time elementary school teacher in Ontario’s Catholic system is putting in a 55.7-hour work week, and what counts as a part-time teaching job averages 36.8 hours per week, according to a new study commissioned by the teachers’ union.
TORONTO - Special education, religion and history teacher Donna Marie Kennedy is leaving her current job as president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association with the conviction that social justice is the cornerstone of her union’s existence.
TORONTO - As Ontario’s high school chaplains try to figure out a new name for their job that fits canon law, they’re also making a bid for some respect. And they’re starting to get it from the province’s bishops.

{mosimage}MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - The funding formula war between Queen’s Park and the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board ended just in time for the school year, and local trustees are claiming victory.

{mosimage}TORONTO - This summer Fr. Henry Carr Catholic Secondary School is moving a few blocks south to Doomstown — to the corner of the street where 19- year-old Jose Hierro Saez was gunned down June 3 in another case which pits police seeking leads against a community too afraid to break the code of silence. Doomstown is the local nickname for Jamestown, the neighbourhood off Martin Grove Road south of Finch Avenue, and one of Toronto’s poorest and most violent.
{mosimage}MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - For the first time since Ontario’s Catholic schools received full funding in 1984, a publicly funded Catholic school is going private.

{mosimage}TORONTO - As Mass ended under bright sunshine outdoors and teacher-librarian Kathryn Zaleski-Cox announced St. Brigid’s Elementary School had made the grade as an Ontario EcoSchool, a cheer went up. For the 580 students of east-end Toronto’s St. Brigid’s Elementary, their teachers and two dozen parents participating in the May 17 Mass, they weren’t just cheering for something students had accomplished with a year’s worth of litterless lunches, reduced energy consumption and heightened ecological awareness. The cheer also recognized prayers answered.
If C1+ reminds you of a mediocre grade you got in high school chemistry, that’s because you weren’t paying attention in French class either.