On January 17, 2020, Fix Our Schools had the opportunity to present to the Standing Committee of Finance & Economic Affairs as part of its pre-budget consultation process. We handed out this document to the committee, urging them to:
- Provide adequate and stable funding to school boards for school infrastructure.
- Develop a standard of good repair for all Ontario’s publicly funded schools.
- Invest the additional $1.6-billion per year needed to eliminate the $16.3-billion repair backlog in schools within seven-eight years.
- Continue to collect disrepair data for schools and resume the practice adopted by the previous Liberal government of publicly releasing annual updates on this school disrepair data; adding portables to this process.
- Work together in a non-partisan, solution-oriented manner to find the funding solutions needed to make the $1.6-billion per year investment in Ontario’s school infrastructure.
The official transcript of our presentation and subsequent questions from both NDP and PC members of this committee can be read HERE. The Standing Committee of Finance and Economic Affairs hears many presentations across the province, which represent an important opportunity within our democratic process to give input to our government on how they ought to prioritize funding in the upcoming budget. The photo below depicts an Education rally at Queen’s Park from the spring, where citizens had another opportunity to provide input to the government on its proposed cuts to education funding.
The presentation delivered by Fix Our Schools served as a platform to further emphasize our asks above to the members of the Standing Committee of Finance & Economic Affairs. Our hope is that our input will be seriously considered as this government develops its spring budget.