The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) has released its annual snapshot of the condition of its schools. The Fix Our Schools campaign applauds the TDSB’s transparency on this issue and looks to the Ministry of Education to follow suit in updating and releasing disrepair data for all of Ontario’s publicly funded schools. As per today’s media release, the TDSB repair backlog currently stands at $3.5 billion and could hit $5.2-billion by 2023 without additional and predictable funding from the provincial government.
The last time the Province updated and released disrepair data for all of Ontario’s schools was two years ago in October 2017. At that time, the total disrepair in schools across the province totaled $15.9-billion, as determined by a third-party engineering firm hired by the Ministry of Education. Ontarians deserve to know if provincial funding for school repairs has been sufficient to start to see total disrepair in Ontario schools start to decrease – or if more needs to be done. Over 2-million children in this province spend their days in publicly funded schools and they deserve safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning. According to John Malloy, Director, TDSB, “Adequate (provincial) funding to modernize our schools is needed to ensure we have learning environments that support student achievement and well-being.”
Our provincial government is responsible for providing all funding for education and schools. This provincial funding provided to school boards 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. Again, we urge the Ministry of Education to release updated disrepair data as soon as possible, in the same format as in October 2017 to provide transparency to all Ontarians. According to Robin Pilkey, Chair, TDSB, “The fact that the TDSB’s backlog could hit $5.2-billion by 2023 clearly demonstrates the need for additional and predictable (provincial) funding”.
