Lead in drinking water has been in the headlines for many months now, starting in early November. More recently, a February 27, 2020 Global News report entitled, “One in four Ontario schools and daycares found lead in tap water” highlighted how lead in drinking water continues to be a healthy and safety concern.
When parents send their children to school or daycare, they presume that the drinking water available to them is safe and free from any lead. That is clearly not the case in many instances. So, what needs to happen to change this reality?
Here are a few ideas:
There is currently no provincial policy mandating school boards to report lead exceedances to parents and students. As one school principal said in the Global News report cited above, “a clear ministry policy would help guide schools in what they should be communicating to parents and students”. Fix Our Schools believes that transparency about the state of our children’s schools is extremely important. Therefore, we urge the provincial government to institute a clear communication policy on drinking water safety in schools and daycares. In the spirit of transparency, we’ve also been routinely calling on the provincial government to update and release its disrepair data for all of Ontario’s publicly funded schools.
There is currently no provincial funding that is provided to school boards to specifically address lead in drinking water. Given that most school boards face many urgent repairs every day such as leaking roofs, unless funding is provided to address lead in drinking water, the solution in many instances where exceedances are found may just be to cap off drinking water sources and place “handwashing only” signs on sinks in classrooms. Therefore, if we want safe drinking water to be available in schools and daycares, then adequate provincial funding must be provided to fix the root causes of lead in drinking water.
Fix Our Schools has been asking the provincial government to develop & implement a standard of good repair for our schools. So far, our call to action has been ignored. School conditions matter. They impact student learning, attendance, and health. #onted #onpoli #OntarioBuilds pic.twitter.com/79MJNRh3w5
— Fix Our Schools (@Fix_Our_Schools) February 20, 2020
There is currently no standard of good repair for Ontario’s schools that would outline the metrics that could be used to measure whether a school is, indeed, in an acceptable state for children to spend their days. While our provincial government has been diligent in collecting disrepair data in schools, this data does not reflect lead in drinking water, asbestos issues, rodents and vermin, classroom temperatures, or portables to name but a few other elements that contribute towards students’ learning environments.
These solutions focus on what Ontario’s provincial government could do to ensure safe drinking water in provincial schools and daycares. However, we would be remiss if we did not mention that our Federal government is responsible for ensuring safe drinking water for First Nations School Infrastructure. Fix Our Schools urges our Federal government to take this responsibility seriously and to co-develop a comprehensive plan with First Nations to ensure safe drinking water is available in all First Nations schools.