Monthly Archives: September 2020

Ventilation in Classrooms – Talk to Us!

September 29, 2020

Unsurprisingly, with the majority of Ontario’s 2-million students returning to school in-person, there are COVID-19 cases attributed to schools. In fact, as of September 28, there are 272 COVID cases in Ontario’s public schools. Some professional engineers are already asking questions about the link between schools with a high level of disrepair and susceptibility to COVID-19 outbreaks.

What continues to be a surprise is how Ontario’s Premier and Minister of Education claim that the back-to-school “plan” their government has funded offers every precaution and safeguard possible for a safe return to school. In mid-June, when this government received the SickKids report, they saw that a key recommendation for a safe return to school was good ventilation. And yet, our provincial government waited a full two months before allocating only a fraction of the funding required for school boards to ensure proper ventilation in all Ontario classrooms. This timing clearly left school boards with very little time to conduct the work required. 

By the time the Province had come around to allocating $50-million for ventilation improvements, Fix Our Schools had already heard from dozens of parents, teachers, and education workers from across the province about specific ventilation concerns that we outlined here.

In a nutshell, when a school is old,  the only “ventilation system” available is to open windows. Lamentably, in many old schools across this province, there are classrooms with no windows, there are classrooms with windows that do not open, and in old schools that have had window replacements, there are classrooms with windows that only open a tiny bit – not nearly enough to create any real ventilation. For old Ontario schools with newer windows that, for safety reasons, are only able to be opened a tiny bit, Fix Our Schools was excited to see that some school boards were adopting the inexpensive and relatively quick solution (compared to other ventilation solutions) of re-setting these windows to be able to open more to allow for better ventilation.

For example, we’ve read in the Toronto Catholic School Board TCDSB Reopening Action Plan that, given school ventilation and windows ventilation is the most essential element of any HVAC system, “the Maintenance Department will proceed with modifications of vertical sliding windows as needed to increase the opening from 4 inches to 12 inches. If possible, this modification will be to the window directly opposite the classroom door to further facilitate air circulation.”

We’re interested in hearing from folks from other school boards to hear what your local school board is doing in relation to any new windows in old schools, that may currently be set to only open a few inches? This “fix” is something that could be done in fairly short order and, compared to other solutions, is relatively inexpensive. Fix Our Schools looks forward to hearing from you about what your local schools are doing about this issue! And, if you do not know, we encourage you to ask your local Principal and your local Trustee about this issue. In the opinion of Fix Our Schools, our provincial government has continued to place a low priority on the health, safety, and well-being of Ontario’s students and the adults who work in schools. However, we also encourage local school boards to be doing all they can with the money they have to make publicly funded schools as safe as possible amidst the COVID-pandemic.

A Standard of Good Repair for Public Schools Has Never Been More Important

September 24, 2020

Since 2014, the mandate of Fix Our Schools has been to advocate for safe, healthy, well-maintained public schools that provide an environment conducive to learning, and working. Amidst the backdrop of a global pandemic, this goal seems more important than ever. However, our provincial government cannot grossly and chronically underfund public schools for over two decades, and then expect these buildings to provide the optimum environments for learning during a pandemic. Over the past several months, we’ve heard from people across the province about classrooms with no windows, or windows that do not open:

We’ve heard about many schools that were actually designed to prevent natural light and good ventilation:

Given that proper ventilation is not possible in many classrooms across the province, other recommendations from the Sick Kids report, such as physical distancing, have taken on even more importance. Yet Doug Ford’s government has not provided sufficient funding to allow for the smaller class sizes that would, in turn, allow for physical distancing in elementary classrooms. Parents, teachers, and education workers across the province have expressed outrage at the Ford government’s refusal to provide a back to school plan that includes physical distancing and yet, Premier Ford and Minister Lecce have continued to refuse to change course.

In fact, on September 17, the official opposition party put forward a motion to cap all class sizes at 15 students.

However, the following PC MPPs all voted against the motion, guaranteeing that class sizes in this province will continue to exceed 15 students, making physical distancing all but impossible in most elementary schools.

If you live in a riding with an MPP who voted against smaller class sizes, we encourage you to contact them to express concern that two out of three of the key SickKids recommendations (physical distancing and good ventilation) are not possible in many elementary classrooms. And perhaps ask them to clarify what the Premier meant when he has repeatedly claimed that his government would spare no expense to ensure our children’s safety?

Toronto Developers Short-changing Local Public Schools

September 22, 2020

Ever since Fix Our Schools began in 2014, we’ve been absolutely stymied by how our provincial government could allow an outdated regulation to continue, which allows Toronto developers to get away without contributing one penny to the local TDSB public school infrastructure, from which they profit. Under two successive provincial governments, Fix Our Schools has been unsuccessful in achieving a change to the provincial regulation O.Reg 20/98 that guides the eligibility for and application of Education Development Charges (EDCs).

In the years since 2014, the Toronto District School Board has also requested the Province look into a change of this outdated regulation and, in fact, went so far as to file with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice that this provincial regulation is “constitutionally inoperative and unfair”. Other stakeholders, such as the Ontario Public School Board Association (OPSBA) and Toronto City Council, have also requested the Ontario government to revisit O.Reg 20/98.

But to no avail – as of September 21, 2020, Toronto Developers continue to get away without contributing one penny to local TDSB school infrastructure. However, there is a renewed interest in changing this outdated provincial regulation with the release of a joint paper entitled, “The Missing Money Our Schools Need Now: Education Development Charges in Toronto”.

This newly-released report by Fix Our Schools, the Broadbent Institute, and Progress Toronto is featured in a September 22 Toronto Star article by Jennifer Pagliaro entitled, “Other Ontario school boards can collect millions from developers – but not the TDSB”. Pagliaro highlights from the report that “amid a pandemic, the time is now for the province to allow the TDSB to collect fees from developers to help build and repair packed and aging schools — money that’s now needed to make necessary adjustments for social distancing, fresh air and more.”

On Sunday, September 27, the Toronto Star Editorial Board published the opinion that “Ontario is needlessly handcuffing TDSB’s ability to repair and build schools”. The editorial piece agrees with Fix Our Schools, the Broadbent Institute, and Progress Toronto that there is an inherent problem with the outdated provincial regulation guiding the eligibility for and application of EDCs, and emphasizes that “the COVID-19 pandemic has also shown how inadequate infrastructure can make it hard to keep kids safe: cramped classrooms, lack of proper ventilation (such as windows that open), and the absence of handwashing sinks in classrooms all make preventing the spread of infections extremely difficult.”

If you would like to see Toronto developers pay into the local public schools from which they profit, please take a minute to sign this petition and tell Premier Ford to make developers pay their fair share. A simple change of this outdated provincial regulation could allow the Toronto District School Board to collect millions of dollars that could be invested in school retrofits (such as ventilation), repairs, expansions, and new schools.

In response to the release of this new report, Saman Tabasinejad from Progress Toronto is quoted as saying, “The overcrowded and crumbling schools in growing neighbourhoods is an equity issue. Toronto had 150 over-capacity schools before the COVID-19 shutdown and the pandemic has only exposed the public health risk of packed schools and infrastructure that is in disrepair. The missing money is creating another systemic barrier standing in the way of building healthy, inclusive communities, at the expense of equity-seeking communities.”

Katrina Miller from the Broadbent Institute said, “We can fix our schools by fixing this outdated regulation. Our schools are old and cramped because developers exploited a loophole, pocketing hundreds of millions that should have gone to make our kids’ schools safe.”

And Krista Wylie from Fix Our Schools stated, “Our call for action has support from left-wing City Councillors to Conservative MPPs. Developers profit from building near good public schools and transit. These same developers ought to contribute monetarily to this public infrastructure. The fact that developers in Toronto have gotten away for so long without contributing one penny to public schools is maddening when so many Toronto schools are overcrowded and in disrepair.”

In this pandemic environment, school infrastructure that is safe, healthy, well-maintained, and not crowded is even more important. Now is the time for our provincial government to make the simple regulatory change required to see Toronto developers start paying their fair share to TDSB schools.

Relying on School Boards, Teachers and Education Workers is Disingenuous At Best

September 15, 2020

The fact is that, for over two decades in Ontario, our provincial government has held control over all the money that is allocated to schools via local school boards. Another notable fact is that, for most of this time, the provincial funding for school renewal and repairs (the money that enables a school board to conduct yearly maintenance and repairs on all of its school buildings) has been a fraction of what industry standards suggest is required.

In fact, early in our campaign, back in January 2016, we wrote a blog asking the questions, “What if you sent your child the store with $10.00 to buy a week’s worth of groceries for your family of four, and they came back, having failed to source sufficient groceries for the family for the coming week? Would you publicly shame them for this failure? “

Our suspicion is that the answer was, and would continue to be, NO! Instead, as the parent in charge of the household budget, you would take responsibility for the fact that, with the money you gave them, they couldn’t possibly have succeeded in buying a week’s worth of groceries for a family of four. Are we right?

And yet, for decades, Ontario’s Ministry of Education and our Premier have frequently blamed school boards for the accumulation of billions of dollars of disrepair in their school buildings while, at the same time, providing grossly inadequate funding (in many years, one-tenth of what industry standards suggest is needed!) to those same school boards.

The dysfunctional dynamic of our provincial government pushing responsibility for successful outcomes on to school boards, while it retains all the power over the money, continues today, amidst a global pandemic. Fix Our Schools expressed outrage and anger several weeks ago when Premier Ford said, Premier Ford said, “We’re really relying on school boards. I just told them I have all the confidence in the world that they’re going to be able to get through this and make sure that the students and the staff are in a very safe environment”.

This type of rhetoric is disingenuous, at best. It is also dangerous, unfair, and prevents solution-oriented dialogue from occurring. Our current Minister of Education, Stephen Lecce has been vague about his government’s response, should a COVID-outbreak occur in Ontario’s schools.

This type of response seems typical of the Ford government, which has flip-flopped on many issues since taking office over two years ago. However, amidst a global pandemic, citizens need a government that will take responsibility, and leads us forward in a positive manner. We do not need a government that behaves immaturely, and blames other entities, such as school boards, for its own mistakes.

Clearly, many issues are on our minds as Ontario’s students head back to school. For Fix Our Schools, ventilation and HVAC in our schools continues to be top of mind. We continue to wonder why the Ford government took two months to allocate funding for school boards to pursue work to ensure optimum ventilation for when school buildings re-opened after having been shuttered back in March. We continue to wonder why the Ford government only allocated such a small amount of money to school improvements amidst a pandemic, knowing that there are $16.3-B of disrepair in Ontario’s school buildings.

A Global News article published on September 13, 2020, entitled, “Canada’s schools need better air ventilation. Amid coronavirus, it could save lives“ Fix Our Schools is quoted several times:

  • “While the Ontario government has allocated $50 million in funding to improve HVAC systems in schools, it came only two months before classes were due to begin. It also came long after SickKids’ report cited ventilation as an important element in a safe reopening.”
  • “You’ve got medical professionals telling you ventilation is key. You know that the 5,000 school buildings in your province have a gross amount of disrepair, and yet the province waited two months to announce a pittance in funding. On a per-school basis in Ontario, it’s $10,000 a school. It’s nothing. Truly, it’s nothing.”
  • “School boards have been put in an untenable position. They’re beholden to the tender process, which takes time. And, because they’re chronically underfunded, they tend to feel pressured to choose the lowest-cost option, which should not be the criteria for all projects.”

In the same article, Jeffrey Siegel, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto, agrees with the sentiments expressed by Fix Our Schools, and says that “the funding allocated so far for HVAC improvements “doesn’t even pass the laugh test”. The fundamental issue is that this is expensive to do under any circumstances, schools can be particularly so.”

So Premier Ford and Minister Lecce, the people of Ontario are actually relying on you and your government to make Ontario’s schools safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working – not only amidst this pandemic but for always.

 

 

Is Humidity the Key to Keeping Us Safe Indoors?

September 10, 2020

Many Ontario students, teachers, and education workers have trepidatiously headed back into schools this week after these buildings were shuttered back in March to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Our provincial government has provided questionable leadership and funding to ensure a safe return to school.

On June 17, the Sick Kids report clearly outlined good ventilation as a necessary component of a safe plan to return to school. However, the Ford government dragged its heels for almost a full two-months before allocating any additional funding for improving ventilation and HVAC systems, and, even then, they only came up with $50-million – a mere $10,000 per Ontario school, leaving school boards focused on short-term fixes rather than any major projects that could improve air quality and ventilation in schools. 

This type of indecisive, slow, and underwhelming response by our provincial government has not inspired confidence. Fix Our Schools has heard from people across the province with concerns over air quality and ventilation in their local schools,  At the same time, knowing that the funding their government provided to school boards came very late and was not nearly sufficient, the Ministry of Education issued this best practices document to school boards, with advice such as:

“Do not open windows and doors if doing so poses safety or health risk, e.g., risk of falling, triggering asthma symptoms, risk of bees/wasps, to students and staff.” 

Rather than continuing to push responsibility and accountability for a safe return to school down to teachers and school boards with this type of unhelpful guidance, Fix Our Schools would have preferred to see adequate provincial funding for things like windows that open, screens for those windows, and, as you will see as you read our guest blogger’s post below, for solutions to ensure optimum humidity in our classrooms. 

We are once again pleased to have Christa Brown, P.Eng. as our guest blogger for the remainder of this blog. Please see her complete bio at the end of this blog post. 

Have you ever had a moment where you learn something new and think, “Why isn’t this common knowledge? How did I not know this before and why doesn’t everyone know this?!”

I had that moment a few years ago when I heard Dr. Stephanie H Taylor speak at an ASHRAE conference on the topic of relative humidity levels in our built environments. Stick with me and you may have this ah-ha moment too.

Relative humidity (RH) is a measure of the amount of water in air, compared to the total amount of water the air can hold at that temperature. We all instinctively know that we feel most comfortable when the humidity level is at a sweet spot – too low and our mouths feel dry and our skin begins to crack and feel itchy – too high and we have trouble breathing or regulating our temperature through sweating. What’s fascinating is that this sweet spot of humidity is also the safest range to prevent the spread of infectious viruses in our built environments!

Here’s an explanation that is rooted in science but described in a super-duper simplistic conversational way with non-scientific terms.

If I sneeze in a room where the RH is only 30%, the dry air has a lot of space for more water vapor and will suck up all that wet mucus from my sneeze really fast making the diameter of that sneeze droplet super small. That sneeze particle, and all the viruses it contains, can float around and travel long distances, and for a long time, before eventually settling on a surface. During all that floating, it can easily be inhaled by others in the room – even those more than 2-meters away.

On the contrary, if I sneeze in a room where the RH is 45%, there is a lot less space for more water in that air. So my sneeze droplet stays wet and the diameter is fairly sizable (for a sneeze droplet). This causes it to settle on the nearest surface pretty fast. We’re pretty good at cleaning surfaces, and washing our hands, so the odds of this sneeze particle causing any damage is way less than in the other example, where the RH was lower.

(source: https://www.esmagazine.com/articles/100453-accepting-airborne-transmission-of-sars-cov-2-our-greatest-fear-and-greatest-opportunity)

What Dr. Stephanie H Taylor, and now many others, have confirmed through their research is that an RH of 40-60% in buildings will reduce respiratory infections and save lives. However, a lot of our built environments – including our schools – do not have the means to control the relative humidity through their HVAC systems because the regulations on indoor air quality do not include a minimum indoor humidity level. In Canada, and other seasonal climates, this has been proven to contribute to seasonal flu patterns. As the weather cools, the humidity levels drop, we increasingly spend more time indoors where the humidity levels are even lower, and we get sick.

Therefore, the HVAC industry, Doctors, and scientists are all calling on the World Health Organization (WHO) “to review the scientific evidence on humidity and health, and recommend a minimum lower limit of indoor humidity in public buildings to reduce respiratory infections”. Check out their active petition at 40to60rh.com.

ASHRAE’s building readiness and reopening guide for schools and universities includes this 40-60% RH recommendation in the “Checklist No. 2: Startup checklist for HVAC systems prior to occupancy” and “Designer Guidelines – General School” sections.

If you’re looking to monitor and control the humidity level in your own home this winter, start by purchasing a hygrometer or a humidifier with a built-in hygrometer. This device, which looks like a thermometer, measures the amount of moisture in the air and can be purchased at most hardware and department stores. Remember, dirty water reservoirs and filters in humidifiers can quickly breed bacteria and mold. So, it’s important to follow the recommended tips for keeping your humidifier clean.

Author: Christa Brown, P.Eng.

Bio: Christa is a professional engineer with 15 years of experience in HVAC water treatment and maintenance best practices. Her experience has inspired advocacy for value-based procurement in the public sector. Christa currently works for Fiix Software, a certified B-Corp that believes better maintenance builds better economical, social, and environmental outcomes.

Ontario’s School Boards and Schools are at the Mercy of the Provincial Funding Model

September 7, 2020

In Ontario, the tweet below explains the overarching dynamic of public education. It speaks to where the power lies, and where responsibility and accountability get placed. As John Michael McGrath tweets, “a reasonably engaged citizen of Ontario could be forgiven for thinking that the primary reason this province maintains school boards at all is so the Premier of the day can push responsibility for all the operational consequences of their funding decisions (onto school boards)“.

https://twitter.com/jm_mcgrath/status/1301586064637911040?s=20

This dynamic is important to understand in the current context of a safe return to school amidst a global pandemic. Fix Our Schools addressed this issue very early on in our campaign, when we wrote to Premier Wynne to remind her that “with great power comes great responsibility.” We urged that Wynne’s “government must start taking the responsibility that comes with having sole power over the funding of public education. Trustees are not magicians. The funding being provided by your government to school boards is insufficient.” The fact that Ontario’s provincial government has all the power and no accountability for education has existed for over 20 years. It is a dynamic that is dysfunctional, and it is a dynamic that has never served the needs of 2-million students in Ontario.

As economist Hugh Mackenzie said, “The (Provincial) government is fully responsible for the level of funding provided but local school boards bear the consequences and are accountable for the results. Despite the government’s complete control over funding, there is no provincial accountability mechanism for the performance of and funding for the system as a whole.”

Our current Premier essentially admitted this dynamic last week, when at his daily press conference, he stated, “We’re really relying on school boards. I just told them I have all the confidence in the world that they’re going to be able to get through this and make sure that the students and the staff are in a very safe environment”. And yet, medical professionals, the SickKids report (that seems to be this government’s guiding light on a safe return to school), parents, teachers, education workers, principals, and citizens across the province have been expressing serious concerns about the plan that the Ford government is funding. And rest assured, the provincial funding model for schools and education is at the root of these current concerns.

At a time when small cohorts, physical distancing, and good ventilation are being cited by experts as critical elements of a safe return to schools, our provincial government’s funding model is creating a situation that is seeing classes “collapsed”, increasing the number of students in a given classroom rather than enabling school boards to hire additional teachers to accommodate smaller class sizes. Shockingly, our provincial government’s funding model is leading to situations where there will be empty classrooms in school buildings that also have classrooms with desks less than a metre apart, with no real possibility of physical distancing.

If you’d like to fully understand how the provincial funding model impacts class sizes, we encourage you to take 3 minutes and 29 seconds of your time to watch this excellent video,


which takes a complicated situation and explains it in a crystal-clear manner, clearly demonstrating how school boards (that cannot, by law, run a deficit budget and have zero power to access a tax base so rely exclusively on provincial funding) and schools (which rely on the money provided to school boards by the provincial government) have zero power over reducing class sizes, or, for that matter, ensuring that every school is retrofitted to ensure proper ventilation – because the money simply is not there.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare just how grossly underfunded our public schools and our public education system have been for over two decades. It has laid bare how the provincial funding formula for education and schools in this province is simply not providing the amount of money that is actually needed. It has laid bare the dysfunctional dynamic of successive provincial governments holding all the power over funding, yet blaming school boards for any deficiencies. This craziness has got to stop. Moving forward, our provincial government simply must look at genuine funding solutions that provide what is actually needed for our public schools and our public education system. If we have learned anything from this pandemic, surely it is that?

First Nations Schools Scrambling to Safely Reopen

September 4, 2020

Fix Our Schools is focused on ensuring that all Ontario students attend safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working. While the majority of publicly funded schools in this province are funded by our provincial government, the federal government is responsible for funding First Nations schools. 

Mirroring the underfunding of public schools and education by the provincial government, the federal government also leaves these crucial elements of our society chronically underfunded. Ontario’s publicly funded schools currently have $16.3-billion of disrepair after decades of chronic underfunding from the provincial government. Even before we saw the challenges of COVID-19, overcrowding, disrepair, and, unbelievably, something as essential as safe drinking water have all been challenges that schools in Ontario’s Indigenous communities face.

Now, the federal government is very late in providing what appears to be grossly inadequate funding to First Nations schools to ensure a safe and effective reopening of schools amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a Globe & Mail article by Willow Fiddler entitle, “Funding delay leaves First Nations schools scrambling to safely reopen”, the federal government just announced $112-million in funding for schools on reserves to help pay for things such as ventilation, personal protective equipment, and cleaning supplies. Fix Our Schools has been quoted as saying, “too little funding, too late” in response to provincial funding for a safe return to school, and this comment certainly applies to this instance as well.

Dobi-Dawn Frenette, executive director of Northern Nishnawbe Education Council, the tribal group that oversees Dennis Franklin Cromarty and Pelican Falls high schools, said that “many of our students may not have access to a learning device, access to [internet] connectivity, they may not have access to a study space, many of our communities don’t have clean drinking water.”

While the rest of Ontario is concerned with what online learning will look like this fall, many Indigenous students aren’t even getting access to that level of education. In fact, according to a CBC report from August 27, some schools serving First Nations students will be resorting to landlines and fax machines to resume some kind of remote learning in September.

Many Indigenous students already make great sacrifices to get the education that every Ontario student deserves. To attend high school, 78% of Indigenous students from reserves in Ontario must leave their communities. Children must live in a residence or board with another family, impacting their mental health, access to community support systems, and inevitably their level of success. Now, because of COVID, the impacts are even greater.

Students who attend Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School in Thunder Bay and Pelican Falls High School in Sioux Lookout leave their communities to live near these off-reserve First Nations schools. These schools are designated as provincial private schools but receive education funding from Indigenous Services Canada to operate. According to Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller, funding for these off-reserve schools is a “jurisdictional triangle”; and they sometimes get caught in the middle of provincial and federal funding delays and confusion.

All of Ontario’s students deserve an education in a safe, well-maintained, healthy building and if that isn’t possible in the short-term, they deserve access to robust online learning, which requires access to wifi and devices. Fix Our Schools worries that our First Nations students may not have access to either of these education options. Unacceptable.

Teachers, Education Workers, Principals & School Boards – Thank You!

September 1, 2020

Students across Ontario will be heading back to school very soon in some way, shape, or form. There continues to be a lot of anxiety and uncertainty; and there is still an unfathomable amount of work to do by teachers, education workers, principals, and school boards. In fact, Premier Ford is relying on school boards (and by extension, teachers, education workers, and principals) to make sure that the students and staff are in a very safe environment. The Fix Our Schools Campaign sincerely thanks all of these folks for joining the ranks of essential front-line workers in this province as students head back to school.

However, Fix Our Schools also questions how genuine our provincial government is being when Premier Ford has repeatedly stated that his government will spare (has spared?) no expense to ensure the safety of students, teachers, and education workers. Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur explores this same concern is his September 1, 2020 column entitled, “Doug Ford has done everything to make schools safe, according to Doug Ford”.

If Premier Ford’s primary concern was safety and he truly was going to spare no expense, he would have announced a lot more funding a lot earlier. Instead, Premier Ford’s government allocated $50-M for school boards to address HVAC and ventilation issues, an amount that nets out to a mere $10,000 per school in the province – and he announced this funding extremely late in the game for school boards to reasonably be able to conduct the work. Fix Our Schools questions the intent of our Ministry of Education outlining “best practices” in this memo, issued to all school boards last week – when surely they know that the funding and time allotted to school boards does not allow them to achieve these best practices?

Similarly, Fix Our Schools questions how Premier Ford’s government approaches mathematical calculations. Last week, the federal government allocated an additional $2-B to provinces to assist with a safe return to school, amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While certainly late in the game, this additional funding meant an additional $763-million for Ontario, bringing the total investment in Ontario to approximately $1.3-B. While Premier Ford would have us believe that his government had already allocated $900-M to a safe return to school, Fix Our Schools believes that a more accurate picture of provincial funding is closer to $540-M, as outlined in this excellent breakdown provided by Ricardo Tranjan of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

This is a lot of money, to be sure – but will it be sufficient? Only time will tell as we see how the Ontario return to school plan actually unfolds in the coming weeks. In the Saturday, August 29 edition of the Globe & Mail, the front-page article entitled, “How safe is school? It depends on your neighbourhood” states that, “while those in-class precautions, such as mandating masks and physical distancing, certainly matter, there is broad agreement among experts that what happens outside school walls is just as important – if not more so – as the safety measures implemented inside.” In fact, Ashish Jha, the director of Harvard University’s Global Health Institute is quoted as saying, “Driving down transmission is the single biggest thing we can do.” and goes on to say that “In most, if not all, places across Canada, you really should be able to open up school safely. It’s not that there is zero risk. There’s never zero risk in the middle of a pandemic.”

This Globe and Mail article is worth perusing as it provides detailed analysis on cities across Canada, as well as neighbourhoods within those cities, ranking them according to a safe school reopening guide created by the Global Health Institute, Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and other groups at the university. Areas are rated as green, or safest to reopen schools, if they are reporting one or fewer new daily infections per 100,000 people on a seven-day average. An area is designated as red, or unsafe to reopen schools, if new daily case counts top 25 per 100,000. In between are yellow (1-10 daily new cases per 100,000) and orange (10-25 new cases) levels that call for varying degrees of caution.

Fix Our Schools shares in the collective anxiety of students, families, teachers, education workers, principals, school boards, and communities as we move towards schools re-opening in Ontario, questioning whether our provincial government has, indeed, done everything possible to ensure a safe return. Ontarians have worked together for six months to keep transmission rates low. Doug Ford may be relying on the school boards, teachers, education workers, and principals to keep everyone safe in schools but the people of Ontario are relying on him to not waste the work every one of us has put into keeping COVID-19 at bay.