Tag Archives: Adequate funding

Adequate and Stable Funding From the Province

On January 17, 2020 Fix Our Schools went to Queen’s Park and sat before the Committee of Finance and Economic Affairs as part of the pre-budget consultation process. Our first ask of this committee was to ensure both adequate and stable provincial funding to publicly funded education and schools.

Without adequate funding, school boards simply cannot meet the goals they need to achieve – such as keeping their school buildings in a state of good repair. Even though this seems like a ridiculously obvious statement, we know that for over twenty years Ontario’s provincial government only provided a small fraction of the $1.4-billion/year that industry standards suggest was required for school boards to be able to properly maintain their school buildings. In fact, when the Fix Our Schools campaign began in 2014, provincial funding to school boards for school repair and renewal was only $150-million/year – one-tenth of the $1.4-billion/year needed! 

The provincial funding dynamic for public schools is akin to a parent giving their child $10 and expecting that child to purchase a week’s worth of groceries for a family of four people. We think you’d agree that the child in this example would not be able to realistically meet the goal outlined, given the completely inadequate funding provided by the parent? School boards are like children in that they rely exclusively on the “parent” provincial government to provide adequate funding. We think you’d agree that school boards would not be able to realistically be able to keep their school buildings in a state of good repair, given that provincial funding for over two decades has been grossly inadequate?

And yet, our provincial government holds school boards completely responsible for the $16.3-billion of disrepair that has accrued in publicly funded school boards over that period. Fix Our Schools find this situation to be frustrating and unacceptable and has proposed that an additional $1.6-billion/year in provincial funding is needed in order for school boards to have a realistic chance of eliminating the $16.3-billion repair backlog in Ontario’s schools within 7-8 years.

Our second request to the Committee of Finance and Economic Affairs was that provincial funding to school boards be stable and predictable. Again, this seems ridiculously obvious that in order for school boards to be able to forward plan and operate in the most effective and efficient manner, they need to know their funding from year to year and be able to count on that funding. However, the reality for school boards over the last 22-years is that each year, they wait with baited breath to find out annual provincial funding; and also frequently deal with mid-year cuts to this funding. This is absolutely unacceptable if school boards are to operate efficiently and effectively.

An example of the degree to which inadequate and unstable provincial funding can disrupt the publicly funded education system and schools is provided in this CTV News Article of January 27, 2020 entitled, “CUPE Claims Ford government not holding up its end of the bargain”.

In this article, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which is the union representing education workers such as caretakers, early childhood educators and lunchroom supervisors, says “the government agreed to restore $78 million in funding to re-hire 1,300 staff across provincial school boards” and “the money was supposed to flow to local school boards at the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year” – “but the money has yet to leave the government’s bank account.” In this article, the government said the money cannot be released until all education-sector unions have signed new contracts, which appears to have been very different from CUPE’s understanding. This misunderstanding has resulted in ongoing inadequate provincial funding and introduced instability to the flow of funding as well. As Fix Our Schools has always maintained, adequacy and stability of funding is key to effectiveness and efficiency.

2017/18 Provincial Budget must contain $1.4-billion for school repairs

We’ve been looking back on history in order to learn and move ahead in funding education in Ontario. We’ve gone back as far as 2002 to examine the Rozanski report on the education funding formula. In this post, we’ll only go back to 2015…

In December 2015, Ontario’s Auditor-General looked at school conditions in this province and began to examine how $15-billion of disrepair had accumulated in Ontario’s publicly funded schools. She used an industry acknowledged standard of allocating 2.5% of the value of your capital assets each year to routine maintenance to confirm that in order to keep Ontario’s schools in a state of good repair (which they clearly are not, given the $15-billion repair backlog in schools across the province), the provincial government must provide $1.4-billion per year to school boards to use on school repairs. 

In June, 2016, the Liberal provincial government acknowledged that funding for school repairs had been inadequate for too long. Minister of Education Mitzie Hunter announced a new $1.1-billion investment over two years for school repairs. When this $1.1-billion was added to the money previously allocated to school repairs, the total investment in each of 2015/16 and 2016/17 added up to the $1.4-billion per year for school repairs recommended by the Auditor-General.

Kathleen Wynne’s government is now in the process of collecting input to forming the 2017/18 provincial budget. Surely, they will not go backwards and reduce annual funding for school repairs to be less than the $1.4-billion that industry standards recommend?  Surely, we can count on our provincial government to provide an adequate yearly revenue source to school boards that they might endeavour to keep schools in good condition for the 2-million Ontario children who spend their days in these buildings?  As per the presentation we made as part of the Pre-Budget ConsultationFix Our Schools will be looking to Kathleen Wynne to allocate a minimum of $1.4-billion in 2017/18 to Ontario school boards for school repairs.