When the Fix Our Schools campaign began in 2014, provincial funding for school repairs was only $150-million/year – one-tenth of what industry standards suggest had always been required by school boards to be able to reasonably maintain their school buildings.
After much work by the Fix Our Schools campaign, in June 2016, a huge increase in provincial funding for school repairs and maintenance was announced. Since June 2016, our provincial government has allocated roughly $1.4-billion/year to school boards for school repairs. This $1.4-B has been allocated via the School Conditions Improvement (SCI) fund and the School Renewal Allocation (SRA) fund. For the 2018-19 budget year, SCI funding was $1-billion ($900-million via the core program and $100-million via the Greenhouse Gas Reduction funding program) and SRA funding was projected to provide $361-million.
In Fall 2017, economist Hugh Mackenzie proposed that to truly fix Ontario’s schools an additional $1.6-billion per year – beyond this $1.4-billion in SCI and SRA funding – was needed for school maintenance, repairs and rebuilding schools.
Today, Doug Ford’s government released its first budget since taking office in June. We learned that his government will maintain annual funding for school repairs via SCI and SRA funding at the same $1.4-billion/year that has been in place since June 2016. We are pleased that no cuts have been made to this important budget allocation. While we agree with economist Hugh Mackenzie that a significant increase to this $1.4-billion/year funding plan is required to truly Fix Ontario’s schools, we are optimistic that Fix Our Schools can work with the Ford government to find new funding solutions. We now look forward to this government implementing a “State of Good Repair” standard for Ontario schools.