Letter to Editor: Don’t forget our school buildings!

February 6, 2016

Fix Our Schools and former School Board Trustee Howard Goodman submitted the following letter to the editor of the Globe & Mail. While it did not get published, we felt it worth sharing with you! 

Don’t forget our school buildings

We applaud big-city mayors for being strong advocates for investment in public transit.  Unfortunately, there is no voice at the table for another piece of infrastructure that is vital to quality of life and economic development – our community-based public schools. 

Many school buildings in major cities were built for baby-boomers and after 60-plus years are overdue for major upgrades.  Roofs and windows, along with electrical, heating/cooling, and communications systems need to be replaced.  But the need goes beyond replacing worn out parts. 

Businesses want to hire people with strong creative, collaborative, and communications skills, and yet our current school buildings were designed for 19th century education when only 2% of children went to university in 1921.  The goal of schools then was to get boys ready for factory work and girls ready for being housewives or secretaries.  Classrooms that have the teacher at the front of the room with students at desks arranged in rows just don’t meet today’s needs.

It isn’t surprising that mayors are lobbying for commuters and ignoring students; schools aren’t within their jurisdiction.  The federal government needs to meet with the Chairs and CEO’s of the major school boards if our children and communities are to have the school buildings that they deserve.

Howard Goodman, EdVocate.ca  &  Krista Wylie, Fix Our Schools Campaign

Former TDSB student’s video on provincial funding of education

February 3, 2016

A former TDSB student interviewed Fix Our Schools members in Spring 2015 as part of a class project. We recently were sent the final 8-minute video, which you can see here.

The student raises excellent questions about how well the provincial funding formula is serving the students of Ontario. While this video’s focus is on the TDSB, the issues raised are ones that many school boards across the province face.

Time for Premier Wynne to take responsibility

January 26, 2016

Do you ever wonder if giving your kids more chores will make them more responsible and mature? What if you sent them to the store with $5.00 to buy $100.00 worth of groceries and they came back with a few boxes of crackers. Would you be complaining that they didn’t buy everything on the list?

No. You would take responsibility for the fact that, with the money you gave them, they couldn’t possibly have bought $100.00 worth of groceries.

For decades, the Minister for Education of Ontario has not taken just that responsibility. Decades of extreme underfunding means we have a province full of schools with boilers about to fail, roofs leaking and issues with structural elements. The poor quality of the school buildings is affecting the learning of our next generation.

In the last 5 years, the School Boards in Ontario have been given a fraction of what is needed to keep our publicly funded schools in a state of good repair. Imagine anyone holding Ontario school boards responsible for the shocking decline in the condition of our schools when the truth is they have been grossly and chronically underfunded by our provincial government. Every parent knows it. And Premier Wynne needs to take responsibility.

Urge Premier Wynne’s government to prioritize schools as integral infrastructure

January 25, 2016

We are asking the people of Ontario to urge our provincial government to prioritize schools as integral infrastructure so that school repairs get funded in the upcoming provincial budget. Together, we can send a strong message to Premier Wynne’s government by taking less than two minutes to do the following:

  • Visit the Ontario Budget Talks website.
  • Click the link in the upper right-hand corner that says, “Log in or Register”.
  • Click the link that says “Create new account” and take 20 seconds to enter your personal information
  • Open the email sent to you to confirm your account. Click on the link to log in, select a password and language setting, confirm your information, scroll down to bottom and click “Save”.
  • Click link on upper left-hand side that says, “View all ideas”, which will take you to “Search terms”
  • Search for, “Fund public schools as integral public infrastructure”. 
  • To support this idea, click the green “Thumbs Up” button. 
  • To comment on this idea, add comments in the section provided below the idea.
  • Tweet using the hashtag #BudgetTalks

CTV confirms many TCDSB schools also in bad shape

January 23, 2016

CTV News reported on January 22 that almost half of the 200 schools in the Toronto Catholic District School Board are in critical or poor condition.

Education Minister Sandals’ response to this report is frustrating. We’ve included our rebuttal to each of her quotes below using bold italics:

“It is the board’s responsibility to keep the buildings in good repair,” Minister Liz Sandals told reporters at a news conference in Guelph.  It is the provincial government’s responsibility to provide adequate funding to school boards to keep school buildings in good repair. With the levels of funding provided to school boards over the last 20 years, there is no possible way any school board could have kept its aging buildings in good repair.

“Their problem is they need to manage the money that they are receiving.” For 2015-16, Ontario School Boards are receiving less than 5% of what is needed to address their current outstanding repair backlogs. Could YOU fix $100 problem if you only had $5? Tough to be that efficient…

Sandals said the Toronto boards have greater opportunities than many other school boards in the province because they can make more money by selling schools where enrolment has dropped than in other cities, where real estate is cheaper. Selling schools takes a long time, is not always the best answer for a community (especially when Premier Wynne is actively pursuing using public assets as community hubs), and only offers a short-term and incomplete solution going forward. 

Sandals said Toronto’s public board has had its funding quadrupled in the last year. If your telephone bill has $100 outstanding and last month you only paid the telephone company $2, but then quadrupled your payment this month to $8… IT STILL ISN’T ENOUGH! 

She said the government has spent $13.4 billion in the last decade on new schools, retrofitted schools, additions and renewal projects. The government plans to spend another $11 billion over the next 10 years on the same expenses.

“If you add that up together, we’re looking at almost $25 billion going to school board capital. Minister Sandals is lumping together money spent on building new schools and additions with money allocated for maintaining existing schools. She is comparing apples to oranges. Only a fraction of the money required to keep our children’s schools in a state of good repair is being allocated by our provincial government and this must change if we want to see the $15-billion capital repair backlog in Ontario’s schools start to decrease … rather than continue to grow. 

 

Toronto Star coverage of disrepair in public schools

January 22, 2016

In the January 20, 2016 Toronto Star, Fix Our Schools was quoted several times in the article, “Schools crumbling amid $1B repair shortfall”, which focused on disrepair in TDSB schools specifically.

While the Fix Our Schools campaign is focused on addressing disrepair in all Ontario public schools, certainly the TDSB continues to stand out as the school board with the most disrepair in its buildings. Last year, the TDSB only received $2.26 for every $100 of disrepair in its schools. The Province keeps touting how it has increased funding for school maintenance, yet when they doubled funding for school maintenance this year, that still only provides the TDSB with under $5 for every $100 of disrepair in its schools…

Could you fix a $100 problem with only $5? I think it is safe to say that no matter how efficient you are, this would be impossible!

 

CTV News covers disrepair in TDSB schools

January 22, 2016

On January 20, 2016 CTV News aired a piece featuring the disrepair in TDSB schools. Fix Our Schools was quoted at several junctures in this piece, highlighting that the provincial government has been grossly and chronically underfunding public schools.

“If the province does not step up and increase the funding that they provide to public schools significantly we are heading to a direction where schools will become unsafe,” head of Fix Our Schools, Krista Wylie, said.

6-year old’s head injury from broken door shows need for school repairs

January 22, 2016

According to this CTV News report by Naomi Parness, a Grade 2 student received a concussion when she was pinned under a broken bathroom stall door at a Toronto school ranked by the province as in need of “critical” repairs.

Ontario’s Auditor-General says there is $1.7-billion of urgent and critical repairs in Ontario’s schools. However, Premier Wynne’s government has only allocated $500-million for Ontario school repairs this year, leaving $1.2-billion of critical and urgent repairs left undone in buildings where children spend 6 hours each day.

Premier Wynne: You and your government must act now to do the right thing – increase funding to Fix Our Schools.