We instinctively know that our governments are accountable when voters are able to assess what and how they are doing. But how do we evaluate the use of our tax dollars? That’s dependent on our having the freedom to access the reports and actions of those who spend them.
At Fix Our Schools we supported the TDSB’s work to give parents access to the true nature of the school buildings in their purview. We were very proud of the board when they published repair lists for every school. Now a TDSB parent can monitor the condition of their children’s school. We haven’t found another school board who publishes the repair backlog for every school in their board. (If you know of another, please contact us!)
We spoke to Robin Pilkey, chair of the TDSB, about why THIS board viewed publishing as an important step for Ontario’s largest school board.
“The TDSB felt that publishing clear and transparent repair data for every one of our schools was an important step towards parents understanding the state of their children’s schools. Two decades of underfunding of school repairs by our provincial government has led to an accumulation of a repair backlog of over $4 Billion in the TDSB’s 583 school buildings. Annual provincial funding has increased drastically in recent years, which is excellent but we still need to find funding solutions for the repair backlog that accrued when annual provincial funding was only one-tenth or less of what industry standards suggest it ought to have been to keep our school buildings in a state of good repair.”
So Fix Our Schools asks: if the TDSB can collate data for 583 schools, publish it on 583 websites and update it annually, why can’t all the other school boards in Ontario do it too?
School trustees are elected by us and work for us. Take a moment to attend a ward meeting, shake your trustee’s hand and ask for your school’s repair list. Or, attend a school council meeting and ask your council Chair to request the data from the trustee; it is the public’s data.
As voters, we need to be able to have informed conversation about publicly-owned school buildings and this is a necessary step toward that goal.