Tag Archives: Auditor General

How the Ford Government Has Failed Us

January 26, 2021

On January 21, 2021, SickKids released this updated version of their Guidance for School Operation During the Pandemic document.

In the release of this updated document, Dr. Ronald Cohn, President and CEO, SickKids, and co-author of the document stated, “When considering public health measures aimed at curbing community transmission of COVID-19, it is our strong opinion that schools should be the last doors to close and the first to open in society. The current school closures need to be as time-limited as possible. It is therefore imperative that bundled measures of infection prevention and control and a robust testing strategy are in place. Additional delays will inevitably further exacerbate the harms to children and the inequities caused by school closures.”

In the summary of this updated document, the most significant changes include testing recommendations, enhanced physical distancing and non-medical mask use, emphasis on cohorting, and updates to the section on mental health and wellness.

Ironically, on the same day, the Toronto Star published an article by Rachel Mendleson entitled, “Internal government documents show how Ontario ‘watered down’ its strategies to keep COVID-19 out of classrooms“, where over 450 pages of briefing notes, memos, and reports from the senior civil servant in the Ministry of Education (read: unelected and nonpartisan!) to Minister Lecce (read: elected and partisan!), that had been obtained via a Freedom of Information request, were examined and commented upon:

“It looks like, originally, they (unelected, non-partisan civil servants) had a lot of things covered, but what they (elected, partisan politicians) ended up implementing … was ‘plan lite.’ You know, let’s take it, but massage it so it’s not as stringent, not as costly. It’s frustrating to see things watered down.” – Andrea Grebenc, Chair of the Halton District School Board

After reviewing the documents that include proposals for safety measures that did not come to fruition related to testing, symptom screening, and class sizes:

“Given where we are right now, it’s hard to look back at that, and think about potential alternate universes where we might have done all of these things that were recommended. It’s like we had these branch points and we picked the wrong path to take.” – Ashleigh Tuite, an epidemiologist from the University of Toronto

Last week, Fix Our Schools addressed a question that had been posed many times,  “Is Premier Ford “doing the best that he can”, given these very challenging circumstances?, and the answer we delivered was, unequivocally, no. In fact, we would go so far as to say the Ford government has failed students, teachers, education workers, families, and communities.

Fix Our Schools has consistently argued that Premier Ford and Minister Lecce could have (and should have) done more to ensure Ontario’s students could learn safely in-person back in their classrooms. So, on a day when SickKids emphasized the importance of in-person learning for Ontario’s children, we were particularly struck by the findings outlined in the Toronto Star article presented above. These findings certainly rendered meaningless the claims by both our Premier and our Minister of Education that “no expense was being spared” and that “everything possible was being done by this government to ensure Ontario students could safely learn in classrooms”.

In a January 25th CBC article, the provincial government shared that its plan to reopen Ontario’s schools “has been informed by the best medical and scientific minds in the country, including SickKids and other hospitals.“. Wow. This is a shocking statement by our government, given that we know only a fraction of medical and scientific advice on the safe operation of schools amidst this pandemic has been heeded by this government.

The role of Ontario’s Auditor-General, seems well-suited to examine this glaringly negligent behaviour of the Ford government, and we call upon her office to critically examine what this government has actually done to ensure the safety and well-being of students, teachers, and education workers amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Auditor-General’s Report: Overcrowding + underfunding = big problems in Ontario schools

December 27, 2015

According to the 2015 Auditor-General’s report, our children’s reality in public schools looks like this:

  • Over HALF of Ontario schools are at least 40 years old.
  • Over 100,000 Ontario students are in portables.
  • 1 out of every 10 schools in Ontario is overcapacity, operating at 120% or more utilization.

Yet, our provincial government’s actions have looked like this:

  • Over the last five years the Ministry of Education has approved only a third of the building projects that school boards have required (to address overcrowding and age).
  • The Auditor-General estimates that $1.4 Billion per year is needed to maintain schools in “a state of good repair,”. Yet in the last five years, the provincial government has allocated only $150-million – $500-million, amounts that equal only 10%- 35% of what is actually needed.
  • For the most part, new projects are favoured over repair and renewal of existing buildings, despite evidence that it should be the opposite.
  • In 2011, the Ministry of Education hired a firm to inspect and assess the conditions of all schools that were five years and older. Total disrepair in Ontario public schools is estimated to be over $15-billion, with over $1.7-billion deemed as critical and urgent (i.e., renewal work that should not be postponed due to risk of imminent failure).
  • The Ministry of Education allocates funding for school renewal based on an overall provincial formula rather than distributing the funding in proportion to individual school boards’ critical needs. The Auditor recommends changing that.
  • School boards can raise additional funds by selling schools with low enrolment, but many boards – for a variety of reasons and competing interests – are reluctant to do that.

We need our provincial government to take a leadership role in addressing both disrepair and overcrowding in our children’s schools.

 

Auditor-General’s Report: What condition are we striving for in schools?

December 9, 2015

The 2015 Auditor-General’s Report raises the concern that there are no guidelines for the desired condition at which facilities should be maintained. There is also no consistent standard for how Ministries ought to measure the condition of assets such as highways, bridges, schools and hospitals.

A bit shocking that the provincial government has gone so far as to log all the disrepair in schools but has not concerned themselves with setting an actual goal to measure success.

Here is an excerpt from page 11-12, Chapter 3 of the 2015 Auditor-General’s Report: which provides examples of how various Ontario Ministries approach determining asset condition and also provides the example of how Alberta approaches this issue in a more transparent, solution-oriented manner:

Assumptions Vary in Calculating Asset Condition

Ministries generally use the Facility Condition Index (FCI), an industry-standard measure of a building’s condition at a given time, to determine if their assets are in good, fair or poor condition. The FCI is calculated by combining the total cost of any needed or outstanding repairs with the renewal or upgrade requirements of the building, divided by the current replacement value. In essence, it is the ratio of “repair needs” to “replacement value,” expressed as a percentage. The higher the FCI, the greater the renewal need.

However, ministries make different assumptions in estimating their repair needs. In its 2015/16 submission to the Secretariat, for example, the Ministry of Education identified an FCI of about 36% for its schools overall by including its current repair backlog and five years of future repair needs in its calculation. In contrast, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care included its current repair backlog and only two years of repair needs in its calculation, and arrived at an average FCI of 23% for its facilities. Because these two ministries assessed the conditions of their respective assets differently, it is difficult to determine which of them has a higher priority need overall.

For highways and bridges, the Ministry of Transportation takes a different approach in assessing their condition. It classifies its highway pavements and bridges as being in good, fair, and poor condition. Pavements and bridges are considered in good condition if they will not require any rehabilitation work for six or more years. Based on this assessment, the Ministry has classified 77% of the pavements and 83% of bridges that they are responsible for to be in good condition.

In comparison, Alberta uses a government-wide standardized FCI as a common measure to enable ministries to compare condition ratings across facility types (schools, post-secondary institutions, government-owned buildings and health-care facilities). It calculates its FCI using current backlogs and five years of future repair needs.

Alberta has targets for the percentage of facilities to be in good, fair and poor condition for the different sectors, and it reports the actual percentage in each category publicly each year, along with the progress made towards achieving each sector’s targets. It uses the following definitions:

• Good—the facility’s FCI is less than 15%, is adequate for intended use and expected to provide continued service life with average maintenance.

• Fair—facilities with an FCI between 15% and 40%, inclusive, have aging components nearing the end of their lifecycle and require additional expenditures for renewal or refurbishing.

• Poor—facilities with an FCI greater than 40% require upgrading to comply with minimum codes or standards, and deterioration has reached the point where major repairs or replacement are necessary.