The Ontario Alliance Against School Closures will be meeting with Education Minister Mitzie Hunter April 5.
Spokesperson Susan MacKenzie of Sarnia says based on information provided by 30 school boards, 611 schools are threatened with closure this year or in the next few years. Another 42 boards have not made their long term plans available to the public.
MacKenzie says the funding formula is at the root of the problem.
"If the government got its funding formula in order, I don't think we'd have to raise taxes to keep schools open," says MacKenzie. "There's a lot of fat at the top, too, that needs to be trimmed. Most of the budget at a lot of these school boards pays for top-end salaries with very little going to the students."
She says school boards are deluding themselves if they think they're going to get funding to build new mega-schools.
"Last year there was $474-million approved by the government for new school builds, renovations and retrofits. But the Ministry received $2.6-billion in applications, so the probability of all these capital projects happening is about 20%."
The alliance's report indicates 25 public schools in Chatham-Kent and Lambton County are threatened with closure.
McKenzie says what's especially troubling is that the ministry's number of 300 school closures for 2016-2017 is a five-fold increase over what has been seen over the past five years.
The alliance is calling for an immediate moratorium on school closures, noting many of them are in rural areas and the backbone of the community
The alliance's full report on school closures can be found here.