The Fix Our Schools campaign is comprised of parents, students, grandparents, teachers, principals, caretakers and citizens who believe that every publicly funded school in Ontario ought to be a safe, healthy, well-maintained building that provides an environment conducive to learning and working. We believe schools must be funded as a key component of our society’s infrastructure and that the $15.9-billion of disrepair in Ontario’s schools must be addressed immediately.
Our provincial government is responsible for providing all funding for education and schools. This provincial funding for school repairs was grossly inadequate for almost 20 years, in many years only ONE-TENTH of what industry standards suggest as the bare minimum school boards required to conduct routine repairs and maintenance. This gross and chronic provincial underfunding meant that Mike Harris’ PC government bequeathed $5.6-billion of school disrepair to the Liberal government in 2003 and that the Liberals allowed school disrepair to triple over 15 years to a shocking $15.9-billion as of October 2017. Furthermore, no provincial standard of good repair exists for Ontario schools to clearly outline the acceptable, measurable conditions for the critical public infrastructure we call schools.
Since launching in October 2014, we have built a large network of support across the province that has allowed us to achieve many successes – all of which have benefitted Ontario’s students, teachers, and education workers:
- Fix Our Schools has been credited with being an integral part of the Increased provincial funding for school repairs from $150-M/year in 2014 to $1.4-B/year – where it continues to sit today.
- Fix Our Schools obtained transparency into school disrepair data so that anyone can find the exact amount of disrepair existing in their local school on the Ministry of Education website.
- Fix Our Schools obtained the commitment of 58 elected MPPs to develop a standard of good repair for schools and to provide adequate, stable funding needed to achieve those standards and eliminate the $15.9-B of disrepair in Ontario’s schools.
We believe that there is strength in numbers and power in our parent-led, non-partisan activism. We encourage you to continue to engage with Fix Our Schools to help further our ongoing efforts to ensure that all Ontario’s publicly funded schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings.
- Subscribe to our e-newsletters: fixourschools.ca
- Engage with us on social media:
- Facebook: Fix Our Schools
- Twitter: @Fix_Our_Schools
- Contact your local MPP, the Premier and the Education Minister to let them know you expect all publicly funded schools in Ontario to be safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working
- Email photos of school disrepair to us @ info@fixourschools.ca to post anonymously. A picture is truly worth a thousand words! Please also send photos of Ontario’s school buildings that have recently been improved or built in your community! We’d love to see how the increased provincial funding for school repairs is benefitting your community.