Parents from one school council banded together to all submit questions about school disrepair to a local all-candidates debate. The result? School disrepair was the first topic to be discussed by all candidates at this debate and all candidates have signed the Fix Our Schools Pledge. Hurrah!
Parents from another school council have engaged other parents in their school community and all contacted their local candidates. The result? All candidates in their riding have signed Fix Our Schools Pledge. Amazing grassroots community involvement! Just what Fix Our Schools loves to see 🙂 When we asked one member of this School Council how they did it, this is what she wrote:
“We didn’t start out talking about school disrepair. Our conversation at School Council about supporting Fix Our Schools began with an acknowledgement that so much of what we do as a council is work to fill holes, to provide stop-gaps. Not the literal holes and gaps—though there are plenty of these as the school repair backlog attests—but instead, gaps created by the inadequate funding of Ontario schools. As a result, parents end up spending the school year fundraising for new playground equipment, arts programming, classroom literacy materials, computers for the library, new gym mats—but the gaps are only getting bigger. This system is not sustainable.
It all comes down to the fact the educational funding formula in this province is seriously flawed, but as a School Council, how do we confront this? The task seems overwhelming. Which is where Fix Our Schools comes in, with their specific focus on the urgent and massive problem of school disrepair. And shining a light on this is the beginning of shining a light on everything.
Once you start shining a light on school disrepair, you can’t turn it off again. It’s easy for those of us who don’t work and learn in these buildings to underestimate the extent of the problem. Most of us on School Council had not visited the TDSB’s Renewal Needs Backlog for our school to see the long list of items in need of replacement or repair, all of them except one marked as URGENT or HIGH in terms of priority. It’s been easy not to notice because many of our teachers have invested time and money in masking problems in their classrooms so that our children can learn in aesthetically pleasing environments—but the problems are there and they’re only getting worse.
With all this in mind, our School Council moved at our most recent meeting to support Fix Our Schools and their FOS Pledge campaign. We appreciated the grassroots, non-partisan nature of the Fix Our Schools movement and their approach. We’re also grateful for the tools they’ve created to make it easier for us to advocate for our children and our community. And most profoundly, we understand how Fix Our Schools was able to start shifting the conversation during the 2014 election, creating momentum they’d build upon during the next few years. As a council we now have an opportunity to use our platform to keep the momentum going. There is potential for hundreds more people in our community to be engaging MPP candidates about school disrepair and flaws in the funding formula as a result of our outreach, and together we can put these topics on candidates’ radar, making this the election issue it needs to be.
Since our meeting, council members have posted on social media about our council’s support for Fix Our Schools, calling on candidates to take the FOS Pledge. We have sent an email letter to all families via our classroom parent representatives with information about disrepair at our school, about Fix Our Schools and the FOS pledge, plus links to tools Fix Our Schools has created to help us engage with candidates on the campaign trail and online. Our Ward Rep also reported on our support for Fix Our Schools at the most recent ward meeting, hopefully inspiring other councils to do the same.
Our staff are happy we’re taking this initiative, our principal is supportive, and as a council we’re feeling enthusiastic and empowered about the possibility of doing something important for our kids. We’re looking forward to making a difference and we hope you’ll join us.”Â