Blue, White and Green
 
 
Phillip Hong
June 18, 2010
 
They were selling Florida condominiums near Highway 50 (the border with Peel Region), and South Korea had just won a World Cup football/soccer match in South Africa, but those are clearly not the reasons why I was awake and on public transit on a Saturday morning.
 
I count myself lucky as a bred Bramptonian because it's a city with a big heart - combining multiculturalism with a small town charm - but being away from it for years while living in York Region had added downright curiosity as to what the central part of Peel has become.
 
As a child, my entire life was based on a neighbourhood that would have been Mississauga without boundary changes, and a little school that was built to create the finest minds. It's also not a surprise to me that my elementary school also holds Peel Region's oldest Spring Fair, an event that not only provides fun for the kiddies, but raises some much needed money.
 
I look back to my younger years and it looks like it was a distant fantasy; a timid, shy child that just wanted to be accepted into society turned bookworm, who needed English as a Second Language in what is now the Custodian's Room. Recently, Parkway Public School managed to build a new extension, which means children now have change rooms. But like most schools in Peel, they've had to make do with a tight wallet.
 
"We still have all the old stuff," a teacher who taught me as a student sixteen years ago said tongue-in-cheek, although I'm still not sure whether it was a budgetary cry for help or a simple way to keep the old piano for generations to come.
 
Choir practice, the small but resourceful library, the dedicated teachers, the decades-old school song that is still sung today - these were just a few of my happiest memories.
 
Which made my education in York Region look like some sort of medical treatment.
 
You see, York Region students get more funding per student per year than their peers in Peel, at least according to the latter board. In fact, a recent statement indicates that Peel would be "sufficiently funded" if it was 1996!
 
I feel like I have cheated on all my former classmates who stayed in Brampton ten years ago, because the minute I entered the school system in York, I was given more in funding. What is the difference between a pupil in Peel, Peterborough or Petawawa?
 
I grew up in the best place you could learn - teachers that care, and who are passionate enough to stay - combined with a school spirit that brings old souls like me to revisit time and time again, years after we left or graduated.
 
This proves one thing: No matter how underfunded Parkway is, its people are what makes it special to me, and you can't buy that.
 
Phillip Hong, a resident within suburban Toronto, is a constant tourist. Check out the interesting experiences of his journeys on The Travelling Briefcase.
   
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