Monthly Archives: May 2020

Caretakers and Maintenance Staff During Ontario School Closures

May 27, 2020

On May 9, 2020, the provincial government approved an emergency order that allowed available school board employees to be voluntarily redeployed to congregate care settings during the COVID-19 pandemic, including hospitals, long-term care homes, retirement homes, and women’s shelters. Many of these congregate care settings are in need of staff such as custodial and maintenance workers.

“CUPE education workers have a strong sense of community and they know there’s a critical need for staffing in health, long-term care, and social services. Many of us have been looking for ways to lend our support and so we’re pleased to endorse this voluntary plan,” said Laura Walton, President of CUPE’s Ontario School Board Council of Unions (OSBCU).

Many education workers – including custodians, early childhood educators, and education assistants – are still on the job during Ontario’s school closures, working to maintain schools and support students who are learning at home:

However, some custodians, youth workers, psychologists, maintenance staff, education assistants, social workers, paraprofessionals, special-needs teachers, and food service workers are coming forward for secondment to other sectors. A huge and heartfelt thank you to all education workers, whether you are continuing to work in schools or helping out in congregate care settings. Your work is incredibly valuable and, indeed, essential!

 

Caretakers More Important Than Ever to Public Education

May 20, 2020

Students and families in Ontario now know that our publicly funded schools will remain closed until at least September. We can appreciate where there are many details to consider before any return to classrooms can be done safely. One detail that we can all agree upon is that health and safety, cleanliness, and hand-washing standards must be developed in any return to school plans. In former Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Opinion piece in the May 10, 2020 Toronto Star entitled, “We need a back-so-school plan“, she proposes any prudent plan would include increased cleaning regimes in schools, which would require increased custodial staff and may require training on deep cleaning techniques.

With this in mind, Fix Our Schools sees caretakers as more important than ever before in our publicly funded school system. We also see the implementation of cleaning, health, and safety standards in our schools as being more important than ever before. We must come together to determine the new standards and protocols that will enable a safe return to school for both students and adults alike. And we must also ensure that we fund an adequate number of fully-trained caretakers to be able to reasonably uphold these standards and conduct these new protocols. For instance, our campaign has frequently heard from parents with concerns over lack of hand soap and paper towels in school washrooms because their local school’s caretaking staff was stretched too thin.

The Fix Our Schools campaign has always appreciated the education workers who often go unrecognized in delivering quality education to our children such as caretakers, office staff, education assistants, and lunchroom supervisors. In fact, we’ve often scratched our heads as our provincial government consistently seemed to undermine their efforts to keep our children’s school safe and clean, as they cut provincial funding. We trust this time has passed and that our provincial government will move forward in a manner that acknowledges and respects the many ways education workers ensure our children’s schools safe, healthy, and well-maintained.

School Infrastructure Projects Are A Priority

May 13, 2020

Back in mid-April 2020 in an article entitled, “Ottawa seeks ‘shovel-ready’ projects for post shutdown stimulus plan”, the Globe and Mail reported that federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna was already seeking “shovel ready” infrastructure projects that might be included in a stimulus plan for the Canadian economy as pandemic restrictions are loosened. The term “shovel ready” refers to infrastructure projects that can be approved quickly and create immediate jobs. McKenna said she was focused on expediting the spending of more than $180-billion in infrastructure spending that has been approved through to 2028 and on getting money out the door this construction season.

As always, Fix Our Schools would like to see federal infrastructure money allocated to school infrastructure projects, even though we know provincial governments are responsible for education funding. We believe the bricks and mortar of school buildings are easily delineated from education itself and, as such, should benefit from federal funding. Federal funding of school projects may be particularly important going forward, as many economists speculate that provincial and municipal governments will be cash-strapped from navigating the COVID pandemic.

Fix Our Schools would also like to ensure that school infrastructure projects are prioritized and that school construction projects get started as soon as possible to leverage this coming construction season.

Alberta’s Infrastructure Minister Prasad Panda seemed to agree based on his mid-April remarks noted in a CBC Report entitled, “Timelines accelerated for five new school construction projects”. Panda said that the provincial government would borrow money rather than continue to pursue public-private partnerships in order to get construction moving more quickly on five schools throughout Alberta, creating around 560 construction jobs. Panda was quoted as saying, “To the extent possible, even under the COVID situation, I am trying not to miss this construction season. That’s the whole purpose.”

Saskatchewan also seems to agree that school construction projects are an important part of the economic plan going forward. In a May 6, 2020 article entitled, “Major infrastructure stimulus plan announced by Saskatchewan government”, $130.4 million in education capital funding is included in the overall capital plan, allowing for seven new school projects and three major renovation projects.

In Ontario, we have not heard any news of accelerating school repair and building projects. Fix Our Schools is wondering when Ontario’s Ministry of Education and/or Ministry of Infrastructure might begin to discuss timelines for school repair and building projects in this province. Construction season is imminent and, given the $16.3-billion of disrepair in Ontario’s publicly funded schools, there is no time like the present to start repairing, renewing, and rebuilding our children’s schools.

While it is clearly a challenging time in our education system, as students and teachers alike grapple with at-home learning, there would be a benefit to conducting construction projects in schools at this time. In recent years, the volume of reactive repairs needed at schools has necessitated that construction projects, such as roofing, often get done while students are trying to learn in these buildings. So a “silver lining” of this current pandemic situation, when children are absent from schools, is that many construction projects could get completed while these buildings are virtually empty.

 

How the Covid-19 Pandemic May Inform Architecture – Including Schools

May 6, 2020

In a Globe & Mail article from May 1, 2020 by Dave Leblanc entitled, “What MIght be the Hallmarks of Post-COVID Architecture?“, many questions are raised about how this global pandemic may inform future building design. The article starts by considering how tuberculosis impacted school design back in the early 1900’s, when people believed that sunlight and fresh air, even in winter, would combat the illness. In some instances such as at the Orde Street School in Toronto, an “Open Air School” was created on the top floor, and pupils learned in classrooms with open windows, often bundled in blankets. While this type of change was not permanent, the transition from lead piping to copper piping – which held far fewer germs – was precipitated by health concerns and has been a permanent shift in how buildings are designed and constructed.

Several architects were interviewed for this article and the following ideas were presented:

  • Courtyards for people to gather outdoors
  • Glassed in corridors with good  ventilation
  • Buildings that are airtight with managed ventilation

 

At Fix Our Schools, we wonder how existing schools will operate post-COVID. It seems as though school buildings themselves will be an important element of how easily any new health and safety protocols can be integrated. In school buildings with narrower hallways, or in schools that are overcapacity, it will clearly be quite difficult for students to maintain distance between one another. Will handwashing sinks and soap become mandatory in every classroom to accommodate regular handwashing or will hand sanitizer become the norm in every classroom?

Fix Our Schools also wonders how the post-COVID reality will inform the design and funding of new school buildings. Sufficient outdoor greenspace, common spaces such as gymnasiums and cafeterias, and multi-purpose rooms give a school inherently more flexibility to cope with any number of challenges. Good ventilation systems and airtight buildings also seem to be important aspects to consider. So, while these features are more expensive to include in new schools, perhaps certain design aspects of schools will be considered a necessity instead of a luxury going forward.