Please take a minute today to send an email to your newly elected MPP expressing your outrage at the $100-million cut to provincial funding for school repairs.
With no fanfare or public announcement, the Ministry of Education sent out memos to school boards across the province letting them know that, as a result of the cancellation of the provincial Cap and Trade program, the 2018 Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funding (GGRF) had been cancelled effective July 3, 2018. The GGRF funding represented $100-million out of the $1.4-billion total provincial funding promised to school boards for school repairs this year.
Industry standards suggest that $1.4-billion/year for school repairs is the absolute minimum amount required for school boards to be able to conduct the routine repairs and maintenance on Ontario’s schools. A reduction of $100-million brings this down to $1.3-billion/year – a 7% cut to provincial funding for school repairs in the blink of an eye. Appalling, really. Especially when we know that $1.4-billion/year was not even sufficient to start to decrease the $15.9-billion repair backlog that has been allowed to accumulate over the past 20 years in Ontario’s schools – when provincial funding for school repairs in many years was only a mere fraction of what it ought to have been. In fact, when Fix Our Schools started 4 years ago, provincial funding for school repairs was only $150-million/year – ONE-TENTH of what industry standards suggest was needed. No wonder so much disrepair has accrued in Ontario’s schools!
The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario has launched this excellent letter-writing campaign as part of its “Building Better Schools Initiative” and we encourage you to participate.