Write a letter to Premier Wynne and Minister Sandals

April 25, 2015

On April 24, Fix Our Schools launched a letter writing campaign to send a clear message to Premier Wynne and MInister Sandals that funding solutions must be found to address the urgent issues that impact 246,000 students and their families.

The full body of the letter being sent is below and if you have found your way to this page and would like to send a letter, please click here:

Dear Premier Wynne, Minister Sandals, Deputy Minister Zegarac,

While governance of school boards is important, funding of school boards is even more important in resolving the issues that impact students’ daily safety, wellbeing, and ability to learn. The TDSB Governance Advisory Panel consultations exclude discussion of funding and, as such, delay the pursuit of funding solutions to urgent issues such as the $3.3-billion repair backlog, cuts to special education and overcrowding at 146 TDSB schools.

TDSB Governance consultations also exclude the Province’s role in governance, even though the Province has power over both the money and major policy decisions. In refusing to take any responsibility, your government is undermining public confidence in the TDSB. As such, will you please:

1. Start working with the TDSB and the City of Toronto to find funding solutions to resolve key issues such as the $3.3-billion TDSB repair backlog?

2. Start fulfilling your stated mandate of using schools as community hubs and acknowledge that selling off public schools is an incomplete funding solution to the $3.3-billion repair backlog and could be shortsighted? *Even if the TDSB were to immediately sell all 130 schools operating below 65% utilization (as per provincial calculations), there would be over $1-billion of repairs in the remaining 458 schools.

3. Release emergency funding immediately to repair all leaking roofs and complete every “urgent” repair currently outstanding at TDSB schools to ensure children attend school in safe, well-maintained buildings?

4. Commit that any recommendations from the TDSB Governance Panel concerning board reorganization, such as splitting up the TDSB into smaller boards, will not delay the Province’s pursuit of funding to the above-noted problems?

There are $14.7-billion in capital repairs needed right now in public schools across Ontario. The $11-billion your government plans to allocate over the next 10 years to building new schools and making capital repairs is grossly insufficient to address the current state of disrepair in public schools. Given the $14.7-billion capital repair backlog in Ontario’s public schools, the $248-million that was noted as a decrease in education sector expense in yesterday’s budget surely ought to have been used towards ensuring the two million children in Ontario who attend public schools learn in safe, well-maintained buildings.

Kind regards,

Your Name

Your Address

 

$14.7-billion repair backlog in public schools across Ontario

April 21, 2015

The TDSB has 588 public school buildings and a $3.3-billion capital repair backlog in those buildings. The Province uses the terminology “$3.3-billion of assessed renewal needs”.

Across the 4900 schools in the 72 school boards across Ontario, there are $14.7-Billion of assessed renewal needs. In fact, every single Ontario school board has a repair backlog, which ranges from $7.4-million to the TDSB’s whopping $3.3-billion.

While the TDSB’s $3.3-billion repair backlog is certainly the largest in the province, you have likely never heard that province-wide, our public schools have a $14.7-billion repair backlog. You may be surprised to learn that Peel DSB has almost $1-billion in outstanding capital repairs, Ottawa-Carleton DSB has $743-million, Thames Valley DSB has $691-million and the Toronto Catholic School Board has $534-million. So public schools are in a state of disrepair across the province – not only in Toronto.

“Capital repair backlog” , “assessed renewal needs” and “outstanding capital repairs” are terms that can be used interchangeably and include many urgent repair items such as: fire suppression and alarm systems; electrical systems; heating/cooling systems; and structural issues. If these types of items fail before repairs can be done, there is a risk to student safety.

We are extrapolating data presented in this blog post from the following facts:

  • TDSB schools have $3.3-billion of assessed renewal needs as per the latest provincial data
  • According to slide 23 titled “School Condition Improvement” in the Ministry of Education’s technical briefing on funding for 2015-16, a total of $500-million is being provided to Ontario school boards for “School Condition Improvement” (SCI) and this SCI funding will be allocated in proportion to a school board’s total assessed renewal needs.
  • According to pages 8 & 9 in this Provincial memorandum, the TDSB will receive $112-million of the $500-million total in 2015-16, or 22.4% of the total SCI funding, which would indicate that the TDSB’s $3.3-billion repair backlog is 22.4% of the total repair backlog for all Ontario schools.
  • Therefore, using some algebra, we can determine each school board’s capital repair backlog and arrive at a total province-wide repair backlog in public schools of $14.7-billion.

What about TDSB schools that are OVER-capacity?

April 21, 2015

The TDSB and the Province agree that an optimum utilization rate for a school is around 85%.

The 130 TDSB schools operating below 65% utilization have been a hot topic of late. However, you may be surprised to learn that there are currently 146 TDSB schools that operate at 100% utilization or more. These overcapacity schools operate extremely efficiently, saving the Province heaps of money by spreading resources such as Administration salaries (an overcapacity school doesn’t get an additional Principal!) across more children. However, these highly “efficient” TDSB schools are not optimum learning environments.

Principals, Vice Principals and staff spend time and energy managing logistics rather than providing good leadership and teaching. In overcapacity schools, holding a school assembly or concert is like a military operation, lunchrooms and gymnasiums might be in use all day every day for a multitude of purposes, and if there is ever an issue in a classroom such as lack of heat or a broken water pipe, then that class of students might learn in a hallway for a few days while the repair is made since there are is no extra space in the school. A school operating over 100% has that much more dirt and litter for caretakers to clean and has that much more wear-and-tear to its facilities.

So while the “empty” schools are getting all the attention, students at 146 TDSB schools learn in an overcrowded environment. In addition to the unacceptable state of disrepair in TDSB schools, this overcrowding is yet another issue that must be addressed to ensure the safety and well being of children.

246,000 TDSB students don’t need a governance panel

April 13, 2015

The provincially led TDSB Governance Panel is simply a distraction from the more urgent issue of inadequate funding and will not address the issues that actually matter to parents such as:

  • the $3.3-billion TDSB repair backlog
  • potential school closures
  • cuts to special education
  • overcrowding at 146 TDSB schools (although you never hear about this in the media, there are actually more overutilzed TDSB schools (operating at 100%+) than “underutilized” TDSB schools.

What would address these issues is if Kathleen Wynne’s government were to take responsibility, as the sole funder of public education in this province, and start working with the TDSB to find funding solutions to these massive problems. Instead, this provincial panel seems to place all blame on the TDSB, which only serves to undermine public confidence in Canada’s largest school board and does nothing to help 246,000 TDSB students and their families.

Fix Our Schools sent a Letter to Premier Wynne and Minister Sandals urging their government to stop blaming the TDSB and start working with the TDSB (and the City!) to find funding solutions to resolve the issues that actually matter to people in Toronto.

Over 20 years to fix our schools at this rate

March 31, 2015

The provincial government has allocated more money to the TDSB to fix its schools than it has in previous years and Fix Our Schools has been given some credit for this move! The TDSB will receive $112-million for “school condition renewal” in 2015-16. This represents a significant increase from the $29-million the TDSB received from Kathleen Wynne’s government this school year and, perhaps, is a small acknowledgment of past underfunding.

So, funding for fixing TDSB schools is heading in the right direction. If we take the $112-million being provided via the Grant for School Condition Improvement and add this to the expected $45.5-million being provided via the annual grant for school renewal, we are looking at a total of $157.5-million/year for the TDSB to fix its schools.

However, at this new level of funding, the current $3.3-billion repair backlog (recently revised from $3-billion based on provincial data) plaguing TDSB schools would take almost 21 years to address. And this, of course, assumes that nothing else goes wrong in a TDSB school for the next two decades. The truth, of course, is that the longer we take to address these repairs, the more complicated and costly they become so we seem to be in a conundrum of never getting ahead of this massive repair backlog.

So while we are thrilled that the provincial government has allocated more money this coming year for the TDSB to fix its schools, we are disappointed that Kathleen Wynne’s government refuses to take accountability for finding a complete funding solution to this massive issue that impacts 247,000 students.

Public Schools in same pickle as Toronto Community Housing

March 31, 2015

While reading this blog post, please keep in mind that Toronto Public Schools are facing an eerily similar challenge to that being faced by Toronto Community Housing. There is a $3-billion repair backlog plaguing TDSB schools that must be addressed immediately. However, the provincial government – the sole funder of public schools in Ontario – refuses to take accountability for this massive issue. As you read the remainder of this blog post, keep in mind that the combined repairs needed in TDSB schools and in Toronto Community Housing units exceeds $10-billion. We are on a scary trajectory if these billions of dollars of repairs aren’t addressed – and soon.

On March 30, John Tory and Toronto Community Housing revealed a plan to address the $1.7-billion of additional funding required to address the $7.5-billion of repairs required in Toronto’s Community Housing units over the next 30 years. This plan’s success hinges on the federal and provincial governments funding a large part of these repairs. In his column in the Star, Edward Keenan suggests this is unlikely. He estimates that for the City to take on the additional $1.7-billion required for repairs would require a dedicated property tax increase of 3% for the next 30 years.

Keenan agrees with John Tory’s argument that “the moral and business cases illustrated by this study make a bullet-proof case for why the Ontario and federal governments should invest now to repair housing.” However, Keenan points out that while the moral and business cases for supporting social housing have been clear for a long time, higher levels of government have continued to download responsibility and accountability for this important public good.

Keenan suggests that if Torontonians do not take on the responsibility to fund these repairs and the higher levels of government also refuse, then Toronto Community Housing units will crumble around the existing tenants, many units will be closed as they become uninhabitable and those tenants will be forced into a private housing market where they might become homeless.

Toronto Public Schools are in the same predicament. Schools are starting to crumble around students and teachers. Will we close schools as they become uninhabitable and force parents to send their children to private schools? Ideally, the province and feds need to step up and start funding public schools as an integral part of our public infrastructure. The province, in particular, which holds all the power over funding at the moment, must start working with the TDSB and the City to figure out funding solutions to ensure that students attend school in safe, well-maintained buildings. While heartening to see the City so engaged in these issues, it is equally disheartening to see Kathleen Wynne’s government so disengaged in real discussions on funding.

 

Buildings continue to deteriorate as TDSB governance reviewed

March 26, 2015

Back in March 2008, when Kathleen Wynne was Minister of Education, she gave the TDSB Trustees two months to figure out a better governance structure for the TDSB. Wynne said that in the 10 years since the provincial government had mandated the amalgamation of six school boards to create Canada’s largest school board, the TDSB hadn’t managed to “come together properly”. Seven years later, this same provincial government apparently still hasn’t figured out a governance solution that works for Canada’s largest school board.

On March 16, 2015, Kathleen Wynne’s government announced that it had appointed a seven member advisory panel to make recommendations on how to improve the governance structure at the TDSB. This advisory panel is to conduct public consultations from March-May 2015 and, based on these consultations, make recommendations on governance changes by Summer 2015.

So for the last seven years, this Liberal provincial government has failed to make the governance changes required for the TDSB to “come together properly”, has continued to ignore funding as a potential root cause of many TDSB issues, and has allowed the repair backlog in TDSB schools to accumulate to $3.3-billion. In failing to take accountability for finding funding solutions to address the $3.3-billion repair backlog that plagues TDSB schools, this provincial government has ignored the safety and well-being of the 246,000 students who attend school at the TDSB. 

This Liberal provincial government has been in power since 2003. They are the sole funder of public education in this province and also hold power over all major policy decisions. Enough is enough – the almost 13% of Ontario’s students who attend school at the TDSB deserve to learn in safe, well-maintained buildings. When is this provincial government going to take the accountability that is commensurate with the power they currently have over public education and make decisions that enable fixing our schools?

 

 

Why does public transit trump public schools?

March 16, 2015

Public transit is a hot topic in urban centres across the nation.  Sadly, public education is not.

In Ontario, public transit in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) was a key issue in both the provincial election in June and Toronto’s municipal election in October. There was much discussion on transit solutions that ought to be pursued and how those solutions should be funded.

In B.C., public transit has also been in the spotlight. Mayors in the Greater Vancouver Area (GVQ) have been working together to raise awareness of the need for transit improvements in the GVA. They’ve been actively encouraging citizens to vote yes in the upcoming special plebiscite vote asking citizens if they would pay 0.5% more in provincial sales tax to fund better transit in the region.

Despite the fact that public schools in both Toronto and Vancouver are in need of billions of dollars of repairs, this issue has received scant attention in Ontario’s recent elections and no plebiscite vote is in the works to decide how to fund public school repairs in Vancouver.

Toronto’s public schools need over $3-billion of repairs, many of which are urgent, including: fire suppression and alarm systems; electrical systems; heating/cooling systems; and structural issues. If these types of items fail before repairs can be done, there is a risk to student safety. Kathleen Wynne’s provincial government blames the TDSB for this unacceptable repair backlog, even though the Province is the sole funder of public schools in Ontario and the repair backlog has accumulated under the watch of the Province.

Vancouver’s public schools need $2.2-billion* of seismic upgrades to prevent collapse in the case of earthquakes. Christy Clark’s provincial government has delayed funding these repairs, but blames the Vancouver School Board for the delay even though the Province is the sole funder of public schools in B.C.

So we have a situation where public schools in two major Canadian cities are in need of massive repairs that could, potentially, impact the safety of students. Neither provincial governments seem interested in finding funding solutions to fix these problems and, instead, blame local school boards for the disrepair even though these school boards have no power over funding. Students are being penalized by the inability of the grown-ups in charge to take accountability and find solutions. As citizens and voters, we must start making the issue of public schools a hot topic and demanding more from our provincial governments. Students deserve to learn in safe, well-maintained buildings and, since they can’t vote yet, we need to demand that for them.

*According to VSB Trustees, the number as at September 2015 is closer to $1-billion in seismic upgrades.

New funding solutions needed for public schools

March 12, 2015

The TDSB will receive only $74.9-million from the Province this year to take care of its buildings; an amount that would pay for only 2.3% of the $3.3-billion of repairs plaguing TDSB schools. To take care of the entire $3.3-billion repair backlog in TDSB schools, $13,414 of funding must be found for each of the 246,000 TDSB students.

The Province insists the TDSB must fund the repair backlog by selling schools. However, the Province’s math doesn’t add up! Even if the TDSB immediately sells all 130 “empty” schools, there would still be over $1-billion of repairs in the remaining 458 schools.

Kathleen Wynne’s government must start working with the TDSB and the City to secure other funding solutions to address the unacceptable state of disrepair in TDSB schools.

The Province is exploring issuing equity in Hydro One to raise billions of dollars for new transit. The City approved a property tax increase, including a special 0.5% levy to pay for the Scarborough subway. At the City budget meeting on March 11, a motion was also made to explore reinstating the $60 car registration tax. Unfortunately, the TDSB has no power to pursue funding solutions such as these.

Surely, the Province and City believe that public schools are as integral to our public infrastructure as transit and will help secure the required funding to ensure TDSB students attend school in safe, well-maintained buildings?