The Fix Our Schools campaign is a grassroots, non-partisan, parent-led campaign asking for safe, well-maintained Ontario public schools that are funded as an integral part of our public infrastructure – on par with transit.
We believe the 2-million children who attend Ontario public schools deserve safe, well-maintained schools, as do the adults who work every day in these buildings. We believe both students and teachers deserve environments that are conducive to learning and teaching.
We also believe that our provincial government must take responsibility for the unacceptable level of disrepair that has accumulated in Ontario’s schools and take the lead in finding funding solutions to address the $15-billion capital repair backlog in Ontario’s schools. For 2015/16, the provincial government has allocated an amount that is less than 5% of what is needed to address this $15-billion of disrepair. While this is significantly more than in previous years, it is still insufficient and disrepair will continue to worsen in Ontario’s schools.
The Fix Our Schools campaign is building a large, connected network of people in Ontario who share these beliefs and want to work together to effect change. The campaign launched in October 2014 and, in the 13 months since then, we’ve built a network of close to 1,500 people that is growing daily. This network gives us far more collective power than we’d have as individuals so we are working hard to continue to grow our base of support to include people from all areas of the province.
If you value public schools as important infrastructure and believe that these buildings must be repaired and rebuilt – then please ensure you:
- Send a letter to the provincial government asking them to increase capital grants to school boards given the new infrastructure money promised by our federal government.
- Promote Fix Our Schools to your network and ask them to subscribe to the campaign and participate in actions we are collectively taking (like letter-writing at the moment!)
- Set up a meeting with your local MPP to discuss the state of disrepair in schools with them; contact us for support in doing this!
- Invite someone from the Fix Our Schools working group to speak at your school or community group