With many Ontario children back to in-class learning, the timing seems appropriate for considering hand hygiene in our schools. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “handwashing with soap and water has been considered a measure of personal hygiene for centuries”. Yet, if we take a look at what hand hygiene looks like in Ontario schools, we may be slightly appalled.
This video of how handwashing must be done one hand at a time at one Ontario school is a reminder that there is much work to be done in Ontario schools to ensure they are safe and healthy environments for students and staff – not only during this pandemic but for the long-term.
The provincial funding provided to school boards for both operating and capital expenses has been inadequate for so many years, that it seems as though soap in schools has become a luxury item; sinks in classrooms have been built to a quality level that they cannot even accommodate regular hand-washing in the midst of a global pandemic (which begs the question, what exactly were they designed to accommodate?);
In the before times, the only time I had a sink in the classroom, kids weren’t allowed to use it because there was not enough time for a caretaker to clean the classroom sinks, and no funding to stock them with soap and paper towel. Our underfunding of schools has caught up to us
— AndreaMarie (@MsAndreaMarie_) January 30, 2021
and countless school washrooms across the province have been allowed to deteriorate to a point where students and staff are uncomfortable using them even for urgent needs, let alone using them for handwashing. In fact, back in 2017, we wrote this blog about a group of grade 5 students who were advocating for better washrooms in their school. Heartwarming to see this kind of activism in young people, and at the same time, heartbreaking that this type of activism would even be necessary, given that Ontario prides itself on having a “world-class education system”.
https://twitter.com/KellyLMNOP/status/1299350949106978817
Chronic provincial underfunding of schools and education has, indeed, caught up to us. Amidst a pandemic, handwashing is an important hygiene practice in schools and, certainly, as we move past this pandemic, hand hygiene in schools will continue to be important to ensuring healthy students and staff amidst more “normal” times to prevent the spread of colds and flus. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has gone so far as to call for investments in things like touch-free faucets, such as the ones we see in local community centers, and ON Route rest stops along the 401 and 400 highways. Fix Our Schools wholeheartedly agrees with this call to action and urges our provincial government to invest in our schools to ensure they are healthy, safe, well-maintained buildings for students today…and for years to come.
Ford can make March Break — and the return to school — much safer, by taking actions including:
👉 comprehensive in-school COVID-19 testing
👉Cap class sizes at 15
👉Paid sick days and family-care days
👉Better ventilation and investments in things like touch-free faucets— Andrea Horwath (@AndreaHorwath) February 8, 2021