Monthly Archives: May 2022

Schools in Mississauga Plagued by $755-M of Disrepair

May 28, 2022

Mississauga schools still waiting for provincial funding for $755,000,000 in outstanding repairs — impacting HVAC systems, roofs, foundations & drinking water— despite many Ontario MPP’s signing a pledge to address this issue in the last election.

The province’s own data is compelling — Port Credit Secondary School needs $19-M in repairs, Glenforest Secondary clocks in at $15.1-M, and Huntington Ridge Public School $3.7-M.

Krista Wylie, co-founder of Fix Our Schools, a non-partisan school advocacy group, warns of the impacts on the health of Ontario students during a critical period when well maintained schools are essential. Wylie’s example is compelling: “Ontario schools with large repair backlogs, like Port Credit Secondary, have so many outstanding repairs that the cost of those repairs would go a long way to fund a brand new school with modern ventilation. Children spend 6+ hours a day in these schools.”

Fix Our Schools, an Ontario-wide campaign, approached every candidate running in the 2018 provincial election with a pledge request. They asked candidates to “make a commitment to ensure that our schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working.” This included creating a State of Good Repair Standard by 2022 that would put standards, measurements & metrics in place for school buildings and fund them.

Hundreds of candidates signed the pledge and a full 58 of those signatories became Members of Provincial Parliament. Twenty-three Progressive Conservative MPP’s were signatories. In Mississauga, MPP Deepak Anand, MPP Rudy Cuzzetto, and MPP Natalia Kusendova had committed to improve school conditions by bringing them up to an accepted standard.

Despite the power of a PC majority government, no action has been taken on the development of this standard to date.

Fix Our Schools has routinely called on the province to fund schools wisely. “Taxpayer dollars are wasted because the government has refused to fund proactive repairs. Every building manager knows that reactive repairs cost more than regular maintenance.”

Why is a Standard of Good Repair so vital?

  • Increased academic performance and decreased absenteeism
  • Increased ventilation because Covid is airborne
  • Removing health issues related to aging buildings will improve the health of students
  • Schools are valuable assets owned by taxpayers that need to be maintained to keep their value
  • The lack of crucial technology and stable wi-fi is related to the disrepair backlog
  • School building conditions impact Ontario’s economy

What does a typical school repair list look like?

Lists of urgent repairs typically include all the basics: ventilation (HVAC), heat (hot water boilers), power (electricity transformers), drinking water, structural issues, leaking roofs, and emergency exits. The vast majority of repairs are large, vital systems, but small items can still be dangerous

Important to note is that the $755-M of disrepair logged in Scarborough schools does NOT include repairing portables, filtering or monitoring classroom air, removing lead in drinking water (63% of schools), remediating asbestos (70% of schools), solving poor classroom temperatures (no A/C in schools and poorly heated classrooms), or accessibility retrofits (AODA deadline is 2025). The province does not track these repair, remediation or renovation needs.

Disrepair in Etobicoke Schools Hits $611.8-M

May 26, 2022

Government data show $611.8 Million of Disrepair Etobicoke Schools

Etobicoke schools are still waiting for provincial funding for over half a billion in outstanding repairs — impacting HVAC systems, roofs, foundations & drinking water— despite many Ontario MPP’s signing a pledge to address this issue in the last election.

The province’s own data is compelling — Wedgewood Junior Public School needs $4.7-M in repairs, Park Lawn Junior Middle School clocks in at $6.6-M, and Braeburn Junior School $4-M.

Krista Wylie, co-founder of Fix Our Schools, a non-partisan school advocacy group, warns of the impact on the health of Ontario students during a critical period when well-maintained schools are essential. Wylie’s example is compelling: “Braeburn Junior School has so many outstanding repairs that their cost would fund 61% of a brand new school. They include 15 urgent repairs such as HVAC ventilation, heat, wiring & washrooms. Children spend 6+ hours a day in these schools.”

Fix Our Schools, an Ontario-wide campaign, approached every candidate running in the 2018 provincial election with a pledge request. They asked candidates to “make a commitment to ensure that our schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working.” This included creating a State of Good Repair Standard by 2022 that would put standards, measurements & metrics in place for school buildings and fund them.

Hundreds of candidates signed the pledge and a full 58 of those signatories became Members of Provincial Parliament. Twenty-three Progressive Conservative MPP’s were signatories. In Etobicoke, both MPP Christine Hogarth and MPP Kinga Surma had committed to improve school conditions by bringing them up to an accepted standard by 2022.

Despite the power of a PC majority government, no action has been taken on the development of this standard to date. Schools in Premier Ford’s riding need a whopping $178.4-Million in repairs.

Fix Our Schools has routinely called on the province to fund schools wisely. “Taxpayer dollars are wasted because the government has refused to fund proactive repairs. Every building manager knows that reactive repairs cost more than regular maintenance.”

Why is a Standard of Good Repair so vital?

  • Increased academic performance and decreased absenteeism
  • Increased ventilation because Covid is airborne
  • Removing health issues related to aging buildings will improve the health of students
  • Schools are valuable assets owned by taxpayers that need to be maintained to keep their value
  • The lack of crucial technology and stable wi-fi is related to the disrepair backlog
  • School building conditions impact Ontario’s economy

What does a typical school repair list look like?

Lists of urgent repairs typically include all the basics: ventilation (HVAC), heat (hot water boilers), power (electricity transformers), drinking water, structural issues, leaking roofs, and emergency exits. The vast majority of repairs are large, vital systems, but small items can still be dangerous

Wedgewood Junior Public School needs 30 high or urgent repairs. However, there is a lot missing from this list. These long repair lists do NOT include repairing portables, filtering or monitoring classroom air, removing lead in drinking water (63% of schools), remediating asbestos (70% of schools), solving poor classroom temperatures (no A/C in schools and poorly heated classrooms), or accessibility retrofits (AODA deadline is 2025). The province does not track these repair, remediation or renovation needs.

Shocking Levels of Disrepair in Scarborough Schools: Total of $1.1-B

May 25, 2022

Government data show $1.1-Billion of school disrepair in all 6 Scarborough ridings

Scarborough schools still waiting for provincial funding for $1.1 billion in outstanding repairs — impacting HVAC systems, roofs, foundations & drinking water— despite many Ontario MPP’s signing a pledge to address this issue in the last election.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The province’s own data is compelling — West Rouge Public School needs $4.4-M in repairs, Wexford Collegiate clocks in at $16.6-M, and North Agincourt Junior Public School $3.1-M.

Krista Wylie, a co-founder of Fix Our Schools, a non-partisan school advocacy group, warns of the impacts on the health of Ontario students during a critical period when well-maintained schools are essential. Wylie’s example is compelling: “West Rouge Junior Public School has so many outstanding repairs that their cost would fund 55% of a brand new school. They include 11 urgent repairs such as HVAC ventilation, heat, wiring & water. Children spend 6+ hours a day in these schools.”

Fix Our Schools, an Ontario-wide campaign, approached every candidate running in the 2018 provincial election with a pledge request. They asked candidates to “make a commitment to ensure that our schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working.” This included creating a State of Good Repair Standard by 2022 that would put standards, measurements & metrics in place for school buildings and fund them.

Hundreds of candidates signed the pledge and a full 58 of those signatories became Members of Provincial Parliament. Twenty-three Progressive Conservative MPP’s were signatories. In Scarborough, MPP Christana Mitas had committed to improve school conditions by bringing them up to an accepted standard.

Despite the power of a PC majority government, no action has been taken on the development of this standard to date.

Fix Our Schools has routinely called on the province to fund schools wisely. “Taxpayer dollars are wasted because the government has refused to fund proactive repairs. Every building manager knows that reactive repairs cost more than regular maintenance.”

Why is a Standard of Good Repair so vital?

  • Increased academic performance and decreased absenteeism
  • Increased ventilation because Covid is airborne
  • Removing health issues related to aging buildings will improve the health of students
  • Schools are valuable assets owned by taxpayers that need to be maintained to keep their value
  • The lack of crucial technology and stable wi-fi is related to the disrepair backlog
  • School building conditions impact Ontario’s economy

What does a typical school repair list look like?

Lists of urgent repairs typically include all the basics: ventilation (HVAC), heat (hot water boilers), power (electricity transformers), drinking water, structural issues, leaking roofs, and emergency exits. The vast majority of repairs are large, vital systems, but small items can still be dangerous

West Rouge Junior Public School needs 11 urgent repairs. However, there is a lot missing from this list. These long repair lists do NOT include repairing portables, filtering or monitoring classroom air, removing lead in drinking water (63% of schools), remediating asbestos (70% of schools), solving poor classroom temperatures (no A/C in schools and poorly heated classrooms), or accessibility retrofits (AODA deadline is 2025). The province does not track these repair, remediation or renovation needs.

Portables: A Key Element of School Infrastructure

May 17, 2022

Very early in the Fix Our Schools campaign, we realized that portables were excluded from the school disrepair data collected and tracked by our provincial government. The rationale provided by the Province has always been that portables were “temporary structures” and therefore, routine assessment of portable conditions was unnecessary. The exclusion of portables from assessments means that the $16.8-B of disrepair currently plaguing Ontario’s public schools does not even include the disrepair found in portables. 

Fix Our Schools disagreed with this rationale, noting that portables often became a rather permanent part of local school infrastructure. Furthermore, some of the most disturbing photos we have received over the 8 years of our campaign have been of deplorable conditions in portables. We continue to advocate that there ought to routine assessments of portables, and that there must be standards of good repair in place for school buildings, schoolyards and portables on school sites. We, of course, also continue to advocate for adequate and stable provincial funding to properly repair and renew not only school buildings but also schoolyards and portables. And finally, Fix Our Schools continues to advocate for a reimagined provincial funding model as a whole.

When it comes to planning new school buildings, provincial funding unfortunately only allows a new school to be built that can accommodate the number of students at the school at the time of funding approval by the Province.  There is no acknowledgement that a new school building has been approved —due to the many new developments being built near that site— meaning many more students will actually be at the school from the first day it opens. That is why we see brand new school buildings open with many portables already on-site. This is not good planning and makes no sense.

Portables also raise equity issues. Students and education workers who spend their days in portables often have more challenging access to resources such as washrooms, gyms, labs, and libraries that are housed in the main school building.

We think it is safe to say that no family or educator is happy when they are assigned to be in a portable for an academic year, which seems to be an indicator that, intuitively, we all recognize that portables are non-optimum learning environments in most cases.

Interestingly, some academic research is also emerging about portables, We recently received this note from Gus Riveros, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education at Western University:

“I have recently examined portable classroom use in the 27 largest school boards in the province between 2010 and 2020 and I thought Fix our Schools may be interested in some of my findings. For example, I found that 60% of schools in my sample have had at least one portable classroom between 2010 and 2020, and that a large number of the schools that had portables during this time period, had portables for more than 8 consecutive years (46%). That is, 937 schools in the 27 largest school boards in the province had at least one portable classroom for 8 to 10 years in a row! My analysis demonstrates that portable classrooms are not used as a temporary, but as a permanent solution to enrolment pressures and infrastructure backlogs. Some of the findings from this study are explained in more detail here.“

Riveros’ findings substantiate the need for our provincial government to reimagine the funding model for schools in Ontario, and to develop standards of good repair for not only school buildings and schoolyards but also for portables. As we move towards the June 2 provincial election in Ontario, this is yet one more issue to keep in mind as we head to the polls.

Platforms and Budgets: Why Ontario’s Schools Matter

May 3, 2022

Ontario’s Schools Matter

Over the years, Fix Our Schools has received many photos of the visible disrepair in Ontario’s schools. We recently received this photo from a school in Eastern Ontario, where a leaking roof is dripping through the light fixtures into permanently placed buckets in the hallway.  You can see that ceiling tiles have been replaced with grates so the water can flow freely and prevent further damage to any ceiling tiles. Clearly not an ideal scenario for the students and adults who spend their days in this building. Also, clearly not a fiscally responsible way to manage the assets we call schools. Fixing capital assets reactively is always more expensive than taking care of assets proactively. However, to proactively maintain Ontario’s schools would require a provincial government that prioritizes these capital assets and, therefore, provides adequate, stable funding to properly invest in these assets.

Despite the fact that the Ford government touts its annual funding of $1.4-B/year for school repairs and renewal, the sad fact is that the repair backlog in Ontario’s schools has increased year over year with this level of funding, and has reached an alarming $16.8-B total. This, of course, means that photos such as the one here are not a rarity. Unfortunately, it also means that many other types of school disrepair lurk beneath the surface because often disrepair is invisible.

Consider Thistletown Collegiate Institute in Doug Ford’s riding with a total of $20.6-M of outstanding repairs that include such items as: “foundation repairs”, “HVAC pumps renewal”, “roof coverings renewal”, and “air distribution, heating and cooling – duct systems renewal”. These repairs are all noted as urgent or high priority items, but are not possible to photograph because they are repairs that are not readily visible.

A Thoughtful, Comprehensive Platform

Over the past four years with Doug Ford as Premier, we have seen a provincial government that has failed time and again to prioritize public schools and education. This was not surprising to us, given that the Ford government’s platform back in 2018 was scant, at best, and highlighted policy priorities such as “Buck-A-Beer” rather than anything of real value to Ontario, such as addressing the massive repair backlog in our public schools or developing standards of good repair for Ontario’s schools.

Fix Our Schools was pleased to see the Ontario NDP party release a thoughtful and comprehensive platform over a month prior to the provincial election, leaving voters plenty of time for reading and consideration. The NDP platform includes many specific commitments to ensuring Ontario’s publicly funded schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained, and provide environments conducive to learning and working including:

  • Clearing the school repair backlog within 10 years.
  • Hiring more custodians and maintenance staff
  • Establishing a province-wide standard for cleaning and school repairs
  • Upgrading public school buildings to make them carbon neutral and climate resilient, and bringing those same principles to new school buildings, to ensure they meet international energy efficiency standards.
  • Ensuring that all schools have up-to-date ventilation systems to prevent the spread of infection during potential future waves of COVID-19.
  • Fixing the rules around education development charges so they can fund the new schools families need.

We would expect any party who is serious about governing Ontario for the coming four years to have an equally thoughtful and comprehensive plan for publicly funded schools in this province. 

Ford’s Budget Fails to Prioritize Schools … Yet Again 

If this week’s provincial budget is any indication of how Doug Ford would treat public schools in this province if elected to serve another four years, then we can expect more of the same – an abject failure to prioritize schools and education. Ford’s recent budget allocated a paltry $14-B over 10 years for capital investments in schools, which translates into only $1.4-B/year for school repair, renewal and for building new schools and additions. Given that the annual allocation for school repair and renewal has been $1.4-B/year since 2016, this proposed commitment of only $14-B over 10 years means that either:

  • We can expect the same inadequate $1.4-B/year annual funding for school repairs and renewal that have lead to year over year increases and a total school repair backlog of $16.8-B (and growing), OR
  • We will see a decrease in this $1.4-B/year school repair and renewal funding in order to allocate some funding for new school builds.

Either scenario is bad for Ontario’s schools and bad for Ontario’s students, teachers, and education workers who deserve safe, healthy, well-maintained learning and working environments. After the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of school conditions (especially aspects such as proper ventilation), it is unfathomable that the Ford budget would basically ignore schools as critical infrastructure.

This week’s budget also included a plan to “expedite school construction with modular builds”, which leaves us wondering how current best practices in sustainable design and decarbonization strategies will factor in to any new school builds in the coming years? Nothing about the phrase “expedite school construction with modular builds” seems to conjure up best practices in environmental and sustainable design. So this is a big question in our minds.

Also of note is that on top of the massive repair backlog in Ontario’s schools (which doesn’t even include portables or schoolyards, and also does not include aspects of school infrastructure such as air quality, temperatures, asbestos, and water quality), much retrofitting is needed for existing schools to become more environmentally sustainable. 

As you engage with your local candidates in the coming weeks, please be sure to keep in mind the 2-million children in this province who spend their days in schools – and ask every candidate about the lack of any standard of good repair for these buildings, and how they plan to address the flawed funding approach that has lead to $16.8-B of disrepair in Ontario’s schools. To make things easy for you, we’ve prepared this one-page sheet you can easily print and keep handy during the election! You may also like to visit the FAQ section of our website for some quick background information on the issue of school conditions in Ontario.