People for Education has tracked the effects of funding and policy changes on Ontario's secondary schools since 2000. In 2002-03, 168 public and Catholic secondary schools were surveyed province-wide. Findings indicate that high school has become a harsher environment for students as schools have become larger and student-to-staff ratios have increased. Teachers and guidance counsellors were responsible for more students than in 2000-01. The number of schools reporting regularly scheduled access to psychologists and social workers had decreased, and waiting lists for special education assessment had grown. The numbers of English-as-a-second-language teachers and programs were declining while immigration was increasing. Ontario's funding formula favors larger schools and assumes that the distribution of school sizes will average out within a school board. However, many rural and northern boards with higher numbers of small schools lack the enrollment base to ensure adequate staffing. Forty-three percent of schools surveyed did not have enough students to receive funding for a librarian. The majority of schools didn't have enough textbooks. There had been little change in access to computers in schools. Most schools charged lab and material, activity, and/or athletic fees. Only the most urgently required work was being done on school buildings, and repairs and maintenance were being deferred. Higher fees were making the use of public spaces in secondary schools unaffordable for many groups. Most rural schools in northern and eastern Ontario had some students on buses for more than 2 hours each day. Four recent studies validate the concerns raised by this tracking report. Eleven policy recommendations are presented. Four appendices present a portion of the education act, number of responses per survey question, number of schools responding per board, and class size information. (Contains 40 endnotes) (TD)