What’s the Plan Premier Ford and Minister Lecce?

July 22, 2021

What is the plan for September for Ontario’s 2-million elementary and high school students to safely resume in-person learning? Having experienced the longest interruption of face-to-face learning in Canada, Ontario’s children surely deserve to be prioritized by Premier Ford and Minister Lecce. As we’ve previously stated, we believe that the Ford government has:

and in so doing, our provincial government has ultimately failed Ontario’s students and their families and our economy. Fix Our Schools sincere hope is that we will see a change in the approach of the Ford government as we head into the 2021/22 school year.

We read with interest the Ontario Science Table’s recent science briefing entitled, “School Operation for the 2021- 2022 Academic Year in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic” that was released on July 19, 2021. This science briefing emphasized that education is “children’s essential work”, that schools are of critical importance to students’ learning and overall well-being, and that in-person schooling is optimal for the vast majority of students.

The focus of the Fix Our Schools campaign continues to be ensuring safe, healthy, well-maintained school buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working for all Ontario students, teachers, and education workers. With this lens in mind, we were struck by the attention given in the science briefing to special considerations required for rural, remote, and Indigenous communities; to indoor air quality (IAQ), achieved through proper ventilation and filtration; and to hand hygiene:

Indigenous Communities 

The July 19th science briefing clearly acknowledged that, “for rural, remote, and Indigenous communities, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented additional distinctive and substantial challenges for education delivery which has expanded inequities”. Specific to school infrastructure, the science briefing highlighted the following points:

  1. Ensure clear accountability for education support whether through federal or provincial resources.
  2. Remote learning is less accessible, due to technological challenges, in these communities.
  3. Aging infrastructure, including older HVAC and supplemental ventilation/filtration systems in many remote First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities may impact the ability to properly ventilate schools and ensure adequate air quality, particularly during local outbreaks and in the colder months when opening windows is not an option.
  4. Schools in remote, rural, and First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities that do not meet the appropriate minimum ventilation guidelines from ASHRAE Standard 62.1-2019, should be prioritized for upgrades.
  5. Overcrowded education infrastructure in some remote First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities could make preventative measures such as cohorting and physical distancing difficult and could result in the need to shift to remote learning in some instances, further contributing to high rates of disengagement. Appropriate resources should be provided to ensure adequate space is available to support consistent in-person learning in these communities, and to ensure equitable access to digital learning resources.

Fix Our Schools must highlight that Canada’s federal government is responsible for First Nations School Infrastructure, and that even prior to the challenges of COVID-19, overcrowding, disrepair, and, unbelievably, something as essential as safe drinking water have all been issues that schools for Ontario’s Indigenous communities. Furthermore, our federal government was very late to provide what appears to have been grossly inadequate funding last summer for First Nations schools to be able to ensure a safe and effective reopening of schools in September 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

With these realities as context, Prime Minister Trudeau, Carolyn Bennett, our federal Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, and Marc Miller, our federal Minister of Indigenous Services must prioritize education and schools for all Indigenous Peoples for a safe return to school for September 2021.

Indoor Air Quality (IAQ)

As stated in the July 19th science briefing, “given the importance of indoor air quality for overall health and learning, achieving adequate ventilation in schools is an important investment to support improved health, academic performance and to assist in preventing the spread of several infectious diseases.”

The recommendations for achieving and maintaining adequate air quality through ventilation and filtration, as taken directly from the July 19, 2001 science briefing, are as follows:

  1. A systematic approach to identifying and prioritizing schools for ventilation upgrades should be undertaken. As a starting point, schools that do not meet the appropriate minimum ventilation guidelines from The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Standard 62.1-2019, should be prioritized for upgrades.
  2. Invest in school heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system infrastructure and regular maintenance. This is of particular importance in schools where the system does not support good indoor air quality. HVAC systems can be optimized for a variety of objectives which may change in priority depending on the context, e.g., COVID-19 pandemic, extreme cold/heat events.
  3. During the pandemic, HVAC system function has been recommended to be optimized for respiratory particle removal (e.g., use of the highest rated Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value (MERV) filter that can be accommodated by the system, regular inspection of filters assembly, routine replacement of filters). In consultation with experts in physical plant design, air exchange rate and outdoor air intake can be increased. The limits of what is possible may be dictated by thermal comfort, humidity, and outdoor air quality.
  4. Consideration can be given to increasing ventilation/filtration above the minimum ASHRAE guidelines, where possible, where more respiratory aerosols are likely to be generated (e.g., music room, auditorium, cafeteria, gymnasium).
  5. Additional strategies can be used to improve air quality while awaiting HVAC system upgrades including the use of available outdoor learning environments; the opening of windows; and the use of portable air cleaners with high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter units in classrooms may be considered in spaces/classrooms with limited ability to achieve adequate ventilation (i.e., unable to open windows, no/insufficient HVAC ventilation), taking into consideration the transmission risk (e.g., age, classroom activities, community epidemiology). Please see page 19-20 of the science briefing for detailed recommendations on portable air cleaners. 
  6. Monitoring ventilation: It is important that HVAC and supplemental ventilation/filtration systems are regularly maintained and that measures are checked with the goal of optimization (e.g., air exchange rates, outdoor air intake, temperature, humidity). Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels can serve as a proxy measure for overall ventilation, but the CO2 level does not necessarily correlate with SARS-CoV-2 transmission risk. While CO2 monitoring has been suggested to be helpful when done properly, it requires expertise and communication and should not detract from ventilation upgrades.

Fix Our Schools urges the Ontario Science Table to acknowledge that all of these recommendations also require adequate, stable funding from the provincial government. And, while we agree that ventilation upgrades must be pursued immediately, we also must emphasize the importance of ultimately having in place:

  • commonly defined and understood standards for indoor air quality (IAQ)
  • acceptable tools and methods to ensure that all Ontario classrooms meet those IAQ standards

A July 20, 2021 Toronto Star article entitled, “What are Durham schools doing to improve ventilation, air quality for this fall?” outlines details on the ventilation and air-quality improvements that will be in place as students return to the classroom in four local school boards. Yet, readers are left wondering what these improvements have achieved in terms of outcomes of improved IAQ in classrooms.

A July 15, 2021 Toronto Star article entitled, “Ontario is opening up for Step 3: What you need to know as you head inside to share air with strangers” also outlines steps being taken to improve the indoor air quality of businesses and public spaces. Yet, readers are left wondering what actually constitutes “acceptable” IAQ (i.e. standards). These gaps must be filled with standards and measurement tools.

Hand Hygiene

As the July 19th science briefing outlines, “routine, frequent and proper hand hygiene (soap and water or hand sanitizer) is important in limiting transmission and should continue to be encouraged in schools. Routine hand hygiene is also beneficial for the prevention of many other childhood infections that have the potential to disrupt school attendance (e.g., gastrointestinal viral illnesses).”

Fix Our Schools urges the Ontario Science Table to acknowledge that access to proper hand-washing facilities is wanting in many Ontario classrooms, as is illustrated in this video. Accessible, effective hand-washing facilities require adequate, stable funding from the provincial government, as does having sufficient caretakers in each school to ensure soap dispensers are filled in a timely manner.

There is much work to be done in to ensure schools are safe and healthy environments for all students, teachers and education workers – not only as the Ford government and the Trudeau government plan for and invest in a safe return to school this coming September, but for the long-term.

 

A Plan for September, Transparency, Data, Metrics & Funding

July 8, 2021

What is the Plan for September Premier Ford?

Ontario parents, students, teachers and education workers continue to wait for the Ford government to release a well-funded, research-based, comprehensive plan for September that prioritizes Ontario’s children, their learning and their mental health.

Meanwhile, news is surfacing about the concerning impact of the pandemic and school closures on Ontario’s children. In a July 8, 2021 Toronto Star article entitled, “Very, very concerning: Pandemic taking heavy toll on children’s mental health, Sick Kids study shows”, Dr. Catherine Birken, a senior scientist and pediatrician at Sick Kids, states that for September, she hopes “there will be a heightened focus on in-person learning that includes the return of extracurricular activities and other support programs, including mental health services, while reducing disruptions to schooling.”

Amidst the frustrating wait for a back-to-school plan from the provincial government and this worrisome news about Ontario children’s mental health, Fix Our Schools was at least pleased to see the TDSB, Canada’s largest school board, carry on its commitment to transparency and advocacy.

TDSB Continues its Commitment to Transparency and Advocacy

Back in August, 2016, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) took a leadership position in transparency. Working with Fix Our Schools, the TDSB became the first school board to publicly release disrepair details on a school-by-school basis. Even though the provincial government had been collecting this school disrepair data for years, the Ministry of Education had never publicly released this data, so back in August 2016, Fix Our Schools was pleased to see the Ministry of Education follow the TDSB’s lead in transparency and release disrepair details for all Ontario schools a few days after the TDSB. We had had been calling for transparency on disrepair data, believing that transparency was critical to acknowledging the magnitude of the problem of disrepair in Ontario’s schools and then to move to finding solutions.

Thankfully, the TDSB has maintained its commitment to regularly updating and publicly sharing the disrepair data for its 588 schools. Fix Our Schools commends the TDSB for this commitment to transparency and was pleased to read the TDSB media release on July 8, 2021, with updated disrepair data for every TDSB school.

In conjunction with reviewing the detailed data on TDSB school disrepair, you may find our 2017 blog entitled, 10 Things you Need to Know About Your School’s Repair Backlog to be informative. It is an “oldie but a goodie” – and sadly, still very relevant. In addition, the TDSB media release on July 8, 2021 clearly outlined that:

  • Our provincial government is responsible for all funding for public education and schools, and that TDSB schools have been underfunded by the our provincial government for many years. Fix Our Schools believes that the TDSB is not unique in this regard, and that all school boards have been chronically and grossly underfunded by successive provincial governments.
  • The Province has allocated $275-million to the TDSB to use for school repair and renewal in the 2021-22 school year, when the TDSB repair backlog in its 588 schools is a gob-smacking $3.7-billion and estimated to continue to grow each year without more financial commitment from our provincial government.
  • Education Development Charges (EDCs) represent an opportunity for an additional $500-million in new revenue for the TDSB over the next 15 years, if the provincial government amended its regulation guiding the eligibility for and use of this money. For years, the TDSB and Fix Our Schools have been asking our provincial government to amend its outdated regulations on EDCs. To date, no changes have occurred, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars in developers’ pockets rather than invested in Ontario’s schools.

In stark contrast to the TDSB’s ongoing commitment to transparency, Fix Our Schools has been consistently disappointed with the Ford government’s lack of transparency. Since taking power in June 2018, Premier Ford’s government has consistently ignored calls to update and publicly release disrepair data for all of Ontario’s schools.  While our provincial government continues to use our tax dollars to collect school disrepair data each year, the only glimpse the public gets into this data is when a member of the opposition party asks a pointed question in a legislative committee meeting.

In November 2019, Education Critic Marit Stiles was able to glean from the government that the overall repair backlog in Ontario’s schools had increased to $16.3-B. As at June 9, 2021, Minister Lecce admitted that the overall repair backlog in Ontario’s schools had increased again to reach $16.8-billion. Of note is that this huge, and growing, repair backlog number does not even include assessments of portables, nor items such as indoor air quality improvements, air conditioning to address extreme temperatures, or asbestos remediation.

 

Fix Our Schools has consistently advocated for transparency; data and metrics to gauge outcomes; and adequate, stable funding to ensure that all Ontario’s publicly funded schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained and conducive to learning. Ontario’s children deserve nothing less. 

Premier Ford and Minister Lecce – when will you make a commitment to prioritize Ontario’s children? The clock is ticking.

Make Children a Priority Now

June 28, 2021

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently took a deep dive into the state of school education one year into the COVID-19 pandemic. A strong, yet imperfect, relationship emerged between how countries historically value education and how frequently schools have been shut down to in-person learning during the pandemic.

Ontario has had repeated and prolonged school closures since the start of the pandemic. Students lost approximately 70 days of in-person learning in 2020, and have lost another 65 days of in-person schooling in the Greater Toronto Area in 2021. Given the OECD research, perhaps this speaks to a general lack of regard for publicly funded education and schools in this province. At Fix Our Schools, we certainly believe that Premier Ford and Minister Lecce have consistently failed to prioritize Ontario’s children, their schools and education, and their mental health. This failure may emerge as a “generational catastrophe”, according to Stefania Giannini, the top education specialist at UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

In a CBC interview on The House, Giannini said that about 90% of the global student population has been impacted by school closures during the pandemic and that, “the UN has warned that unless education is prioritized, the world could be facing a “generational catastrophe.”  She urges governments to “think of education as a third pillar — along with health and job creation — that’s needed to end and recover from the COVID-19 crisis.”  

Closer to home, several Ontario organizations are also ringing alarm bells that publicly funded education and schools absolutely must be a priority as we transition out of the COVID-19 pandemic:

Letter to Premier Ford from the Ontario Science Table, Released on May 29, 2021

The Wilfred Laurier research briefing confirms that the following  significant harms to Ontario students have been caused by school closures. This research briefing also confirms that these harms have fallen most heavily on vulnerable populations such as students with lower socioeconomic backgrounds, racialized children and youth, newcomers, and students with disabilities:

  • Substantial deterioration of mental health status among children and youth, which will present significant long-term challenges during our recovery from the pandemic.
  • Reduction in school attendance and student achievement
  • Loss of skills development and in lifetime earnings for Ontarians
  • Reduction of social connections
  • For some Ontarians, school closures meant missing meals and other critical health services.

Beyond the findings on the impact of COVID-19 on Ontario’s students, the research paper cited above also points to the “need for an explicit education recovery strategy that is informed by data and measurement. It also highlights a significant challenge for the province: there are extensive data gaps and there has been a lack of ongoing consistent evaluation over the last year, both of which are needed for effective evaluation and recovery”.

The letter to Premier Ford from the COVID-19 Science Table also contains a look to September and beyond. The letter states that “summer will provide an ideal time to make the whole school system even safer by continuing to improve ventilation in school buildings and by vaccinating students. Moreover, Ontario should now start developing recovery plans to address the long-term mental health, health and educational problems arising from COVID-19-related school closures. This will require investments.”

OPSBA Discussion Paper, Released on May 27, 2021

The OPSBA discussion paper is designed to elicit collaborative dialogue with education partners by identifying key questions to build on current observations, identify the need for further study, and to create a frame for a new vision for school. Recognizing the COVID-19 pandemic as “one of the great social and economic disruptors of our time, with widespread impact on one of society’s most traditional institutions – school”, OPSBA’s discussion paper states, “We can’t pretend this educational roller-coaster hasn’t left many students isolated, their parents stressed and some teachers on the brink of burnout. Nor can we ignore the fact low-income and racialized families were hit hardest by both the virus and the switch to online learning. The truth is, COVID-19 reinforced inequities many students face.”

Fix Our Schools agrees wholeheartedly with OPSBA that “this is a rare once-in-a-lifetime chance to reset how Ontario provides education, a critical moment that needs everyone’s voice – students, educators, parents, trustees, everyone in our school communities.”  As Fix Our Schools previously stated, “beyond basic health and safety needs, we also need a vision of excellence for Ontario’s schools and education that is better than what was considered “normal” prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and that this vision for excellence absolutely must be developed with input from all education stakeholders.” Given that Ford’s government was elected having a scant education policy platform, the Ford government has no mandate from the electorate to determine a vision for public education and schools without input. Ontario’s children and youth are going to need to be prioritized for many years to come.

What is Next Premier Ford and Minister Lecce?

Premier Ford and Minister Lecce: Are you willing to acknowledge that public education and schools in this province are as important as public health and job creation in order to end and recover from the COVID-19 crisis? Are you willing to prioritize and invest in public education and schools in this province? Are you willing to be transparent, and use data, standards and metrics to ensure Ontario’s students get what they deserve? So far, the answer seems to be NO.

While British Columbia seems actively planning for a safe and “almost normal” back to school, Ontario’s provincial government says they will get back to us in July about what September may look like. While Doug Ford’s government continues to stall and dither on making firm investments and commitments to Ontario’s schools and education system, the Liberals announced their “Education Recovery Plan” to significantly invest in smaller class sizes, mental health, special education, learning recovery supports, safe schools and a supportive start to the school year.

The Liberals noted that every dollar invested in education returns $1.30 to our economy and that the Ontario Liberal Education Recovery Plan would pay for itself in money returned to our economy, and therefore returned to the province in increased tax revenue. Specific to school infrastructure, the Liiberals called for:

  • Cancellation of Highway 413 once and for all and a reinvestment of the $8 billion in savings into building and repairing schools, so that our children can learn in state of the art facilities measured by publicly-reported standards.

  • $525 million of provincial funding immediately (to match federal investment in urgent upgrades) to improve ventilation and filtration systems, air conditioning and window upgrades that will significantly and permanently improve air safety for COVID-19 and other illnesses.

While Fix Our Schools acknowledges that the Ontario Liberals had 15 years in power to truly fix our publicly funded schools, we appreciate the thought and specificity of their Education Recovery Plan and will be sure to hold them to account as the provincial election cycle unfolds.

 

Drinking Water in Schools – Another Failing Grade for Canada and Premier Ford

June 18, 2021

Before the COVID-19 pandemic took centre stage in our lives, lead in drinking water had been in the headlines. A 2019 Toronto Star article entitled, “We can do better. Province concedes it must be more transparent about lead in school water“, featured a massive investigation revealing over 2,400 schools and daycares in Ontario with exceedances of lead in drinking water over the previous two years. At that time, the provincial government had acknowledged it could “do better”.

Almost two years later, an investigative piece published on June 11, 2021 in the Toronto Star revealed that “a third of Ontario schools still have dangerous levels of lead in drinking water – two years after Province pledged to fix it.” According to this recent data, one in 10 water tests from Ontario schools and daycares showed levels of lead above Health Canada’s maximum accepted concentration of five parts per billion (ppb). Schools and daycares are not required to tell parents and students when lead exceedances are found.

Lead can have many negative impacts, including lowering IQ and triggering behavioural disorders. According to a March 2021 study published in the Annals of Epidemiology, students in Ontario schools with lead exceedances between 2008 and 2016 scored lower in reading, writing and math testing, compared with students in schools without lead exceedances.

If high lead levels are found in a school’s water supply, as per provincial guidelines, school staff must flush the pipes by opening the tap and letting cold water flow for at least five minutes, or in some instances install a filter, and in other cases decommission the tap for use. Routine flushing of pipes is the most common solution, and many experts, such as Bruce Lanphear, a leading Canadian water researcher at Simon Fraser University, view flushing as only a short-term fix that does not prioritize the health of students. Lanphear suggests that what is actually needed is to eliminate taps or fountains with lead contamination. However, removing lead pipes that wind their way through building walls and floors is expensive. Given that Ontario’s schools rely upon provincial funding for repair and renewal of schools, and given that Ontario’s schools currently have a $16.3-billion repair backlog, it is difficult to imagine school boards having the means to properly address lead in school drinking water without additional provincial support – in the form of both funding and policies.

When parents send their children to school or daycare, they presume that the drinking water available to them is safe and free from any lead. Clearly, this is still not the case – even though this issue was clearly identified back in 2019. We’d suggest the same changes we recommended years ago are urgently needed today:

The Province must institute a policy mandating all school boards to report lead exceedances to parents and students. As one school principal said in this Global News report, “a clear ministry policy would help guide schools in what they should be communicating to parents and students”. Fix Our Schools believes that transparency about the state of our children’s schools is extremely important. While certain school boards, such as the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), have committed to being transparent by routinely publishing and updating disrepair data, and by starting to publish drinking water results, this is not the norm. Therefore, we urge the provincial government to institute a clear communication policy on drinking water safety in schools and daycares to ensure full transparency. In the spirit of transparency, we’ve also been routinely calling on the provincial government to update and release its disrepair data for all of Ontario’s publicly funded schools.

The Province must provide adequate funding that is designated specifically to addressing lead in drinking water. There is currently no provincial funding provided to school boards (or municipalities) to specifically address lead in drinking water. Given that most school boards face many urgent repairs every day such as leaking roofs, unless funding is provided to address lead in drinking water, the solution in many instances where exceedances are found may just be to cap off drinking water sources and place “handwashing only” signs on sinks in classrooms. Therefore, if we want safe drinking water to be available in schools and daycares, adequate provincial funding must be provided to fix the root causes of lead in drinking water.

 

The Province must develop and fund a Standard of Good Repair for Ontario’s schools. There is currently no standard of good repair for Ontario’s schools that would outline the metrics that could be used to measure whether a school is, indeed, in an acceptable state for children to spend their days. While our provincial government has been diligent in collecting disrepair data in schools, this data does not reflect lead in drinking water, asbestos issues, rodents and vermin, classroom temperatures, indoor air quality, nor is disrepair tracked and reported on any portables.

While the above solutions focus on what Ontario’s provincial government must do to ensure safe drinking water in provincial schools and daycares, we must also address safe drinking water for Canada’s Indigenous Peoples, including access to safe drinking water in schools. A May 6, 2021 article in TheTyee.ca entitled, “My Community’s Boil Water Advisory Is Almost as Old as Me“, author Valerie Ooshag starts by reflecting on her remote fly-in community of Eabametoong First Nation, which has been on a boil water advisory since August 2001. Ooshag also takes a broader look to note that there were 52 long-term advisories in effect as of April 2021, impacting 33 communities. This unacceptable situation continues to exist despite a 2015 commitment by Prime Minister Trudeau to lift all boil-water advisories by 2020.

Ooshag states, “Canada is a first world country, with Indigenous populations and communities having to live under boil water advisories, with some children and youth never having had access to clean drinking water in their entire lives. In the 2015 election campaign, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed to lift all boil-water advisories by 2020. It is now 2021, and yet there are still these 52 advisories affecting 33 communities that don’t have access to clean drinking water.”

Inconceivably, there is no new target date for the government to keep its six-year-old promise. We recently gave Canada and Premier Ford a failing grade and continue to do so in relation to the issue of safe drinking water for all citizens. Both Canada’s federal government and Ontario’s provincial government can and must do better on this issue.

Failing Grades for Both Canada and Premier Ford

June 8, 2021

A Failing Grade for Canada

Canada has repeatedly failed Indigenous children, their families and their communities. The discovery of 215 children buried in unmarked graves at Kamloops Residential School has highlighted that there was nothing about Canada’s Residential Schools that was safe, healthy or conducive to learning.

NOTE: Several weeks after 215 unmarked graves were found Kamloops Residential School, on June 24, 2021, the Cowessess First Nation announced a preliminary finding of 751 more unmarked graves near the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Southeast Saskatchewan. We expect additional unmarked graves will continue to be unearthed.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was formed in 2007, in response to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the largest class-action suit in Canadian history. In June 2015, the TRC presented the executive summary of the findings contained in its multi-volume final report, including 94 “calls to action” (or recommendations) to further reconciliation between Canadians and Indigenous Peoples.

The following recommendations are specific to Education:

6. We call upon the Government of Canada to repeal Section 43 of the Criminal Code of Canada.

7. We call upon the federal government to develop with Aboriginal groups a joint strategy to eliminate educational and employment gaps between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians.

8. We call upon the federal government to eliminate the discrepancy in federal education funding for First Nations children being educated on reserves and those First Nations children being educated off reserves.

9. We call upon the federal government to prepare and publish annual reports comparing funding for the education of First Nations children on and off reserves, as well as educational and income attainments of Aboriginal peoples in Canada compared with nonAboriginal people.

10. We call on the federal government to draft new Aboriginal education legislation with the full participation and informed consent of Aboriginal peoples. The new legislation would include a commitment to sufficient funding and would incorporate the following principles:

i. Providing sufficient funding to close identified educational achievement gaps within one generation.

ii. Improving education attainment levels and success rates.

iii. Developing culturally appropriate curricula.

iv. Protecting the right to Aboriginal languages, including the teaching of Aboriginal languages as credit courses.

v. Enabling parental and community responsibility, control, and accountability, similar to what parents enjoy in public school systems.

vi. Enabling parents to fully participate in the education of their children. vii. Respecting and honouring Treaty relationships.

11. We call upon the federal government to provide adequate funding to end the backlog of First Nations students seeking a post-secondary education.

12. We call upon the federal, provincial, territorial, and Aboriginal governments to develop culturally appropriate early childhood education programs for Aboriginal families.

So much listening, collaboration, funding, and commitment to do better is needed to address Canada’s hitherto abject failure of Indigenous children, their families and communities. 

A Failing Grade for Premier Ford and his Government 

Premier Ford and his government failed to make the public health policy decisions that could have led to better outcomes for Ontario’s students, their families, teachers, education workers and Ontario’s businesses. In Robyn Urback’s Globe and Mail opinion piece of June 3, 2021 entitled, Doug Ford’s pandemic response has been the worst of Canada’s Premiers, she states,

“nowhere else in Canada have children been out of school so long, have seniors been hit with two equally devastating waves, have outdoor activities been so restricted for months, have personal service workers been forced into such prolonged shutdown and have retailers and other businesses faced such extended restrictions. And in exchange for these sacrifices, the province can boast … average case numbers, and above-average deaths.”  and also  notes, “Along with kids, Ontario’s seniors – particularly those in long-term care homes – have disproportionately borne the burden of Mr. Ford’s aimless, undisciplined approach to pandemic control.” 

Fix Our Schools’ focus continues to be on ensuring that Ontario’s schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working. Throughout the pandemic, Premier Ford has claimed that he shared this focus, and that he prioritized Ontario’s students, their schools and education, and their mental health.

However, in our opinion, Premier Ford and his government have:

and in so doing, Premier Ford and his government have ultimately failed Ontario’s students and their families and our economy.

Acknowledging this failure, we must now look forward to ensuring Ontario’s students return to school in September as safely as possible and with as much normalcy as possible, to be sure. To deliver on this goal, Premier Ford and his government must ensure standards, metrics, data and investment are in place as quickly as possible. Success also requires that Premier Ford provides leadership that allows both the education and public health sectors to maintain a steadfast focus on September.

Beyond safety and normalcy, we also need a vision of excellence for Ontario’s schools and education beyond what was considered “normal” prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Let’s remember that pre-pandemic, $16.3-B of disrepair existed in Ontario’s schools following decades of provincial underfunding, and we had no standards in place for schools to measure whether schools and classrooms were safe, healthy, well-maintained and provided environments conducive to learning. This vision for excellence absolutely must be developed with input from all education stakeholders. Given that Ford’s government was elected having a scant education policy platform, his government has no mandate from the electorate to determine this vision on its own. Ontario’s children and youth are going to need to be prioritized for many years to come.

Citizen Advocacy Works!

A recent study found that when citizens make direct contact with their local government representative – they do influence decision-making and policy. This same study also found that sharing personal stories is a powerful way to communicate with your local government representatives. So, at a time when many people have started to disengage, feeling a lack of control and a lack of hope at times – we encourage you to dig deep and advocate on behalf of Ontario’s students.

Please email Premier Ford or call him at 416-325-1941
Please email Education Minister Lecce or call him at 416-325-2600
Please also contact your local MPP

Please share your stories with our provincial leaders. Tell them how school closures and online learning have been impacting the children in your life. As two doctors wrote, “we cannot let our children and youth become the pandemic’s collateral damage.” Let’s work together to make Ontario’s children a priority now.

Will Ford Make a Decision or Simply Let the Clock Run Out?

May 29, 2021

We’ve said it before and we will say it again. Since the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Premier Ford and Minister Lecce have consistently failed to prioritize Ontario’s children, their schools and education, and their mental health. Full stop.

Last week, when Premier Ford announced metrics for a plan to re-open Ontario. One glaring omission was a re-opening plan for Ontario’s schools. A week later, there is still no plan in place, nor are there any metrics identified for when schools might safely re-open. Instead, Premier Ford has opted for a “consultative approach” to decision-making.

This change in approach was surprising from someone who, until recently, did not even take the advice of a Science Table put together specifically to provide consult on COVID decisions. It begs the question whether Premier Ford is truly concerned with making a good decision, or whether this is a technique to:

a) ensure he is not held accountable for any decision on re-opening schools?

b) run the clock so long that he avoids having to make any decision, and simply allows Ontario’s students and their families to continue to be mired in uncertainty?

And so, here we are heading into June, coming down from a third wave that, had Premier Ford adopted this more consultative approach earlier, could have been far less devastating. And so, here we are heading into June, and Ontario’s children and families continue to struggle to manage the challenges of both online learning and ongoing uncertainty. Premier Ford’s inaction and failure to prioritize Ontario’s students has been a constant during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While Fix Our Schools always endeavours to be forward-thinking and solution-oriented, this brief review of recent history in Ontario clearly shows that our provincial government has consistently opted for inaction, the wrong actions, lack of transparency, and downplaying the seriousness of COVID-19 instead of taking actions based on research, data, and the recommendations of its own Science Table and experts. Recent history also shows us that the Ford government has never truly prioritized the importance of publicly funded schools and education; and that our provincial government has never truly prioritized the health and well-being of Ontario’s students, families, teachers, and education workers.

Aside from bringing clarity on metrics and a plan for the remainder of the 2020/21 school year, the Ford government must also be looking ahead to the 2021/22 school year. When Ontario’s students head back to school this coming September, wouldn’t it be thrilling if schools were filled with fully vaccinated people? Prioritizing Ontario’s students, their teachers and education workers to be fully vaccinated by August 24 (First Day of School Minus 14 days!) seems like one step towards a safe September. Already, at a local level, we are seeing certain Ontario regions move ahead with a focus on full vaccination of students.

While we’re on the topic of September, wouldn’t it be thrilling if every classroom was properly ventilated and metrics were in place for indoor air quality for our students to ensure not only their health but also an optimum learning environment? Wouldn’t it be thrilling if the Ford government actually started investing in schools to eliminate the $16.3-B disrepair that existed in these buildings even before COVID?

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that huge change is possible in very short-order when there is the political will for that change.

Ontario’s Children Deserve So Much Better

May 18, 2021

“Leadership is not a rank, it is a responsibility. Leadership is not about being in charge, it is about taking care of those in your charge. ”           – Simon Sinek

During the last 14 months, Premier Ford and Minister Lecce have consistently failed to take care of Ontario’s children, their schools and education, and their mental health. Full stop.

Let’s Do Our Part as Citizens to Advocate for Ontario’s Children

As Ontario’s children continue to learn online and struggle to manage the ongoing uncertainty and complexity of this pandemic, Fix Our Schools urges every parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, teacher, education worker, and caring citizen to take a few minutes this week to advocate for our children. Please contact Premier Ford at premier@ontario.ca or 416-325-1941, and Minister Lecce at stephen.lecce.pc.ola.org or 416-325-2600, as well as your local MPP.

As a campaign that has been advocating for safe, healthy, well-maintained schools since 2014, we suspect that most of you are as disappointed as we are in our provincial’s government failure to take care of Ontario’s children, their schools and education, and their mental health. So we urge you to share your concerns, frustrations, and disappointments with our provincial leaders. Tell them how school closures and online learning are impacting the children in your life.  

When enough people take action and raise their voice collectively, positive change is possible. Solutions can be found and funding can be found when the political will exists to focus on a priority. Let’s work together to make Ontario’s children a priority now. 

As two doctors wrote in an opinion piece entitled, For the sake of the kids, don’t write off the school year just yet, “we cannot let children and youth become the pandemic’s collateral damage. School doors should be the first to open and the last to close.“

A Key Part of Prioritizing Ontario’s Children is to Prioritize Schools

Fix Our Schools has advocated for seven years for safe, healthy, well-maintained schools that provide environments conducive to learning and working. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in Spring 2020, prioritizing schools as critical infrastructure has become essential. The need for stable, adequate provincial funding to address the $16.3-billion of disrepair that existed in Ontario’s schools prior to the pandemic is evident, as is a standard of good repair for Ontario’s schools. And certainly, the need for proper ventilation in classrooms and schools to prevent COVID’s aerosol spread has received a lot of attention during the pandemic.

In a recent CBC interview, Dr. Fisman, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health and one of the co-authors of a recent Lancet paper about the airborne nature of COVID, noted that indoor spaces (where people from different households gather, like schools) “need to be well ventilated by opening the windows, cleaning the air with HEPA filters, or upgrading ventilation systems.”  In this May 10, 2021 Globe and Mail opinion piece, Dr. Fisman furthers his call to action that our primary public health policies to mitigate the spread of COVID must shift from two metres distancing and hand-washing to ventilation and high-quality masks. Fisman suggests that monitoring ventilation using portable carbon dioxide monitors is key to success, as is opening windows and improving ventilation or air filtration when ventilation systems are poor. There are many schools (and wings within Ontario schools) without any mechanical ventilation.

In a May 17, 2021 investigation piece in the Toronto Star entitled, “Blind spots raised over ventilation rules“, ventilation is cited as key: “Based on the latest scientific evidence, two metres distance with masking may not be sufficient if ventilation is poor or unknown indoors“. And, one dad in Quebec took air quality testing into his own hands and found that schools without air purifiers have three to four times more COVID-cases.

All of these findings confirm the SickKids report recommendations provided to our provincial government back in June, 2020, stating that proper ventilation was going to be a key to safe schools and classrooms amidst the COVID-pandemic. At that time, Fix Our Schools crowd-sourced ventilation issues across the province and found an alarming number of classrooms with no windows, windows that did not open, and schools with no mechanical ventilation systems. As we shared with Global TV in early September, “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, as well as guidance from the Public Health Agency of Canada”. And as we expressed in this late August news piece, “the province knew months ago that air quality issues would need to addressed, and it should have allocated the funding sooner. On the ground, principals, teachers, school boards, education workers will actually make this a safe environment, but it will be a herculean effort. It will be underfunded by the Province, and it will be a small miracle that it all comes together.”

 

Almost eleven months from when we first crowd-sourced data from you about ventilation in schools and nine months from the time that our provincial government announced an initial $50-M in funding for ventilation, what does ventilation look like now in your local school? We’re interested in once again crowd-sourcing real, on-the-ground information from parents, teachers, caretakers, principals, and education workers. We asked you before and we’re asking again now to please contact us today with the following:

  • name of your local school
  • any ventilation improvements that have been made (ventilation system improvement projects, introduction of air purifiers to classrooms, ensuring windows can be open)
  • any ventilation issues you may still have concerns about
  • your local MPP and/or the name of your provincial riding.

We will compile this data over the coming weeks and share our findings. Ontario’s children have been failed time and again during the COVID-pandemic. They deserve better. The way to achieve this is to create the political will within the Ford government to actually start prioritizing children, their schools and education, and their mental health.

Our Public Schools: Critical Infrastructure In Need of True Investment

May 11, 2021

Public Schools are Critical Infrastructure – as are Paid Sick Days

The Oxford English dictionary defines infrastructure as, “the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.” Since the inception of the Fix Our Schools campaign back in 2014, we’ve proposed that publicly funded schools are critical infrastructure and must be prioritized and funded as such by both our provincial and federal governments.

Amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of prioritizing schools as critical infrastructure has been highlighted. Issues such as the $16.3-billion repair backlog in Ontario’s schools prior to the pandemic’s start, a lack of any standard of good repair for Ontario’s schools, and the need for proper ventilation in classrooms and schools to prevent COVID’s aerosol spread have all come to the forefront.

More recently, Fix Our Schools joined the call for paid sick days, recognizing that addressing the root causes of COVID-19 spread in communities was absolutely necessary for public schools to be considered safe for in-person learning. In essence, a paid sick days program has become a necessary part of our public infrastructure that enables Ontario’s workers to stay home when feeling unwell, get tested for COVID, self-isolate if needed, and get vaccinated. 

The Ford government was incredibly slow to recognize paid sick days as critical public infrastructure. After 15 months of workplace outbreaks being a key driver in COVID-19 spread, our provincial government finally came to the table with a paid sick days plan. This plan, coming amidst a horrific third wave, has been declared “pitifully inadequate” by opposition parties and medical establishment. Workers only receive 3 days (instead of 10-14 as recommended), and the plan is only temporary, expiring in September 2021.

Ventilation and Air Quality in Classrooms and Schools

The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly highlighted that public schools are critical infrastructure in our society. The need for ventilation in classrooms has become a priority as good ventilation was proven to significantly reduce COVID transmission. Fix Our Schools has always advocated for good ventilation and air quality as integral to creating healthy, safe, optimum learning environments, and we began exerting pressure on our provincial government as early as June 2020 to prioritize investing in schools as critical infrastructure to ensure a safe re-opening of Ontario’s public schools.

By mid-June, the Ford government had issued a loose “approach” to school re-opening in Ontario that recognized improved ventilation in classrooms and schools as a key factor in safe reopening but, surprisingly, the Ford government did not allocate any new funding to school boards to make ventilation improvements. This was akin to a parent sending a child to a grocery store to buy the family’s groceries and giving them zero dollars to do so – a clear set-up for failure.

By the end of June, Fix Our Schools had crowd-sourced details on ventilation in classrooms across Ontario, and the news was not good.

In fact, many schools across the province have classrooms with no windows, windows that do not open, and/or windows that only open a tiny bit – hardly conducive to good air-flow and ventilation:

“The HVAC system at York Humber High School in Toronto has been broken for more than a decade.”

“My daughter attends Tom Thomson School in Burlington. Her classroom this year only had windows along the top of the outside classroom wall. These windows were not reachable, provided very little natural light, and did not open.“

“Harry Bowes Public School in Whitchurch-Stouffville is a lovely school and built within the past 20 years. However, the air circulation is terrible, and windows barely even open. Most teachers and students are continually sick and allergies are a problem while in the building as well.”

“Memorial City Elementary School in Hamilton is 100 years old and the dust coming out of the ventilation system seems that old too. While the windows are newer, the tracks are so badly gummed up that only a couple can be opened and they cannot open much.”

“At Mount Hope School in Hamilton, the upper-level windows do not open at all and the lower level windows only open a bit.”

“As a parent, I’ve been concerned about poor ventilation, no fresh air at Equinox Alternative School in Toronto for years! I am a volunteer in the school and can confirm it is almost never a comfortable temperature. With the added serious concerns regarding COVID-19, and the clear medical guidance (commissioned by the Province!) that fresh air can help reduce transmission, it’s the time to invest in windows.”

“At Earl of March Secondary School in Ottawa, there are many interior classrooms that do not have windows. The school is 50 years old and the HVAC has never worked properly.”

“At Holy Trinity Catholic Elementary School in Sudbury, the kindergarten classroom has no windows. It used to be a resource room, but was converted into a regular classroom due to increased enrollment.”

And still, no funding provided by our provincial government so that school boards could actually start addressing ventilation issues. In fact, even by the end of July, the Ford government had not provided any additional funding for school boards to use for ventilation improvements. As of late July, Minister Lecce was still insisting that the routine $1.4-B/year funding for school repair and renewal (NOTE: this inadequate level of “investment” had led to a $16.3-B repair backlog in Ontario schools), ought to be sufficient for school boards to make schools safe to re-open amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. This was recognized as untenable, as evidenced by the Toronto Star Editorial Board’s piece on July 27, 2020 entitled, “Ontario’s back-to-school plan must come with cash“, “whatever the exact amount, it will be money well spent. As a society, we have to figure out a way to make the return to school both successful and safe. When the province unveils its back-to-school plan this week, it should also provide its own estimate of the cost — and assure Ontarians that it will find the money. Students, parents, and educators deserve no less.“ 

It was not until July 30, that the Ford government started to realize that school boards would, in fact, require additional funding to make schools safe for re-opening. Too late to make a difference for a September re-opening, Education Minister Lecce finally announced a mere $50-M in funding for school boards to improve ventilation in classrooms, waiting a full two months after SickKids had clearly identified ventilation as a key element to safe in-person learning. The $50-M in funding for ventilation equated to approximately $10,000 per school in Ontario. This was too little funding provided far too late – mere weeks before schools were re-opening.

Fix Our Schools identified that ventilation continued to be a big concern in Ontario’s schools as of late August – mere weeks before schools were meant to re-open. Experts agreed with this assessment:

As Ontario’s children are relegated to exclusive at-home learning for the third time amidst this pandemic, ventilation continues to be a hot topic. It is one of the keys to safe in-person learning amidst a pandemic, and our hope is that good ventilation and air quality will continue to be prioritized well beyond this pandemic as a key element of safe, healthy, effective school infrastructure.

Moving Forward in Education Planning

Education Minister Lecce just made the annual GSN (Grants for Student Needs) announcements, which provide further details to Ontario’s school boards on how previously announced funding in the provincial budget must be allocated. Economist Ricardo Tranjan reminded us that the last provincial budget in November did not contain good news for education funding.

Minister Lecce also proudly revealed “additional funding” of $1.6-B for COVID-related costs that had not been included in the most recent provincial budget. This announcement was received with skepticism by many. Liz Stuart, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, commented that this provincial funding “does not keep pace” with boards’ actual costs and “while Minister Lecce trumpets ‘additional funding’ to respond to COVID-19, it should not be lost on anyone that he is providing the same inadequate amount as last year.”

Embedded in Minister Lecce’s announcements last week was also a clear intent to move forward with cementing online learning as a choice within our public education system. This seems like yet another example of the Ford government using the cover of the COVID-pandemic to push its own political agenda; in this instance – an expansion of online learning. 

 

Noticeably absent from the provincial announcements last week was any discussion of whether Ontario’s schools might re-open at all this school year for in-person learning. As Dr. Daphne Korczak, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and Chair of the Canadian Pediatric Society’s Mental Health Task Force and Dr. Mark Feldman, a pediatrician and vice president of the Canadian Pediatric Society, wrote in an opinion piece entitled, For the sake of the kids, don’t write off the school year just yet, “Is the plan to quietly let the clock run down, rather than to determine how to provide students with at least a few weeks of quasi-normalcy and closure — so important at the end of the year — especially for students in transition to new schools and new surroundings?

As physicians, we support evidence-based measures that will stem this third wave. We are part of the health care system, and we worry about it becoming overwhelmed. We are also concerned about the well-being of our colleagues in adult medicine, who have borne an unimaginable burden over these past 14 months.

But we cannot let children and youth become the pandemic’s collateral damage.

School doors should be the first to open and the last to close.“

While Minister Lecce and Premier Ford claim to have prioritized children and education amidst the pandemic, their announcements last week certainly do not support this claim.

Premier Ford: Get to Work Now!

April 27, 2021

Amidst a crushing third wave of COVID, Ontario students, families, teachers, and education workers are currently contending with the third shutdown of schools, and any in-person learning. Heart-breaking, overwhelming, disappointing, and stressful are just a few of the adjectives people have been sharing with us to describe how this feels. Ontario’s students deserve to get back to school and in-person learning as soon as safely possible.

What Could Have Been Done Differently?

While Fix Our Schools always endeavours to be forward-thinking and solution-oriented, we feel that a brief review of recent history is needed in order to learn, and move forward. And, recent history in Ontario clearly shows that our provincial government has consistently opted for inaction, the wrong actions, and downplaying the seriousness of COVID-19 instead of taking actions based on research, data, and the recommendations of its own Science Table and experts. Recent history also shows us that the Ford government has never truly prioritized the importance of publicly funded schools and education; and that our provincial government has never truly prioritized the health and well-being of Ontario’s students, families, teachers, and education workers.

In Spring 2020, a forward-looking provincial government could have taken the opportunity, while students learned at home, to conduct repairs and maintenance that can be challenging (and sometimes dangerous) to do while students are in school.

In May 2020, Fix Our Schools noted that “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.”

In Summer 2020, the Ford government could have listened to the science, research, and data presented and invested the funding that was actually required to ensure that physical distancing was possible in all classrooms, that all classrooms had adequate ventilation, and that every school had adequate caretaking staff for hand hygiene to be easily accessible and available. As early as June 2020, SickKids cited proper ventilation as an important element in any safe return to school plan. At that point, Fix Our Schools began collecting information from across Ontario about the state of ventilation in Ontario’s schools.

We heard from dozens of parents, educators, and education workers across the province with a myriad of issues pertaining to ventilation, including classrooms without windows, windows that do not open at all or that only open a tiny bit, and some older schools and portables without HVAC systems to bring in fresh air from outside. Fix Our Schools shared those details and urged citizens to contact Premier Ford, Minister Lecce, and their local MPP to request adequate funding to address ventilation issues in schools and classrooms. However, the Ford government provided only $50-million of funding for ventilation improvements ($10,000 per school) in August 2020 – months after SickKids first identified ventilation as a key aspect of a safe return to school. 

In Fall 2020, Ontario schools did open for in-person learning. However, a significant portion of families living in “hot spot communities”, where COVID rates were high, chose to keep their children home for online learning. Families made this difficult choice because the in-person learning options at local schools did not feel safe, knowing that community spread was significant. Throughout the Fall months, Minister Lecce and Premier Ford continued to claim Ontario’s schools were safe, without ever mentioning that their statistics relied heavily on families in hot spot communities keeping their children out of school to pursue online learning. This fact is rarely mentioned in media coverage of public education during the pandemic and represents yet another way in which marginalized communities have been disproportionately negatively impacted by the COVID pandemic.

In Winter 2021, our provincial government continued to ignore the recommendations of SickKids, medical professionals, public health professionals, education professionals, and, indeed, it ignored the recommendations of civil servants within the Ministry of Education when this government implemented only “half-measures” to ensure the safety of students and education workers in the classroom amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.  Instead, it chose to politicize the issue of safe, healthy schools in the midst of a pandemic, and continued to underfund Ontario schools and its education system, all the while claiming it prioritized Ontario’s children.

As Spring 2021 continues to unfold, we have seen Premier Ford and his government choose to cling to the same playbook of inaction, ignorance, and playing politics amidst a horrific third wave that has overrun our ICUs and shuttered our schools once again. As one member of the Ontario Science Table, Andrew Morris, said after Ford’s announcements on Friday, April 16, “It was mind-boggling. I’m still in shock“.  On April 20 2021 Ontario’s Science Table came forward with a very clearly articulated outline of what should have been done, and a clear plan for what still can be done to move forward and stem the tide of this crushing third wave.

The Way Forward

Doug Ford, please get to work on quickly implementing the recommendations clearly outlined by Ontario’s Science Table:

  1. Permit only truly essential indoor workplaces to stay open, and strictly enforce COVID-safety rules in those workplaces
  2. Pay essential workers to stay home when they are sick, exposed, and need time to get vaccinated
  3. Accelerate the vaccination of essential workers and those living in hot spots
  4. Limit mobility
  5. Focus on public health guidance that works, encouraging outdoor small gatherings, with physical distancing and masks
  6. Keep people safely connected, allowing people from different households to meet outdoors with masks and physical distance, and encouraging safe outdoor activities

Ontario’s children need to get back to school and in-person learning as soon as is safely possible. The ball is in your court Premier Ford. You’ve wasted critical weeks now on inaction, actions that make no sense or cause further harm, and on downplaying the health crisis in which we now find ourselves. The answers and the way forward have been presented to you time and again. Please step up now, and do what needs to be done to address the root causes of COVID spread and get Ontario’s students back to school.

Research, Data and Science: Critical to Good Policies and Funding Decisions

April 13, 2021

NO RESEARCH, DATA, OR SCIENCE AS YET TO SUPPORT EXPANDING ONLINE LEARNING 

As COVID-19 numbers in Ontario have been growing exponentially, and our hospital ICU capacity approaching its limits, students, families, teachers, principals, education workers, and school boards have been anxiously tracking whether schools would continue to be open for in-person learning, how childcare would be managed if schools were closed, whether the postponed March break would happen, and the list goes on. These past few weeks, we have been experiencing a tremendous amount of uncertainty and stress, related directly to the COVID-pandemic. And, amidst this incredible uncertainty and stress, Premier Ford and Minister Lecce have proposed legislation that would fundamentally change Ontario’s publicly funded education system by expanding online learning in Ontario. Wow.

As Annie Kidder, Executive Director of People for Education, said in this interview on The Agenda, “in a crisis, nobody is totally paying attention, and you can sneak in an enormous change to the entire public education system.”

Expressing similiar concerns, Martin Regg Cohn asserts in his April 13 opinion piece in the Toronto Star entitled, “Don’t let Doug Ford’s incompetence fool you. His plan for schools shows he hasn’t forgotten his political agenda” that amidst a COVID-19 crisis, the Ford government is abusing its mandate, misusing public funds, and wasting precious ministerial bandwidth on pursuing an expansion of online learning in Ontario, when there is no proven demand nor any public policy justification.

Fix Our Schools agrees with Annie Kidder and Martin Regg Cohn, and worries that the Ford government is using the cover of the COVID-19 crisis to push an agenda that could cause irreparable damage to Ontario’s public education system. Premier Ford’s recent provincial budget provided no new money for publicly funded education. So, make no mistake, expanding online learning would take money directly from schools, classrooms, and in-person learning. And let’s remember that Ontario students attend schools with a mind-blowing $16.3-B repair backlog so every dollar for schools and classrooms counts.

As the Chair of the Rainbow Board, the largest school board in Northern Ontario, said in this CTV Article, “If we split the delivery of education into several different options that are available, none of them will be properly funded“.  So, while Premier Ford and Minister Lecce claim that parents want this “choice” of online learning, we must highlight that that this choice comes with a cost to the quality of in-person learning in this province.

Also important to note is that Premier Ford’s proposal to fundamentally change the way education is delivered in this province has been put forward without a mandate from the electorate and without any understanding of the impact that this year of online learning has had on students. There is simply no data, research, or science as yet on the impact of online learning on students’ learning, social skills, and mental health. Without research and data to support the expansion of online learning, we simply cannot know if this is a prudent course of action pedagogically.

The only thing we do know is that this course of action sets up the provincial government to save money (and possibly even make money) on the delivery of public education. As the Toronto Star’s editorial on April 12, 20021 stated, “such an absurdly speedy timeline for a very controversial shift in education policy can only be a deliberate attempt by the Ford government to ram this through while people are struggling with pandemic life and focused on getting vaccines for themselves and their loved ones. Even to propose permanently expanding the use of online learning before fixing the many problems with quality and access that have been demonstrated with its use in the pandemic can only be about money. Specifically saving money, and possibly even making money by selling online courses internationally.”

After thirteen months of a pandemic that has laid bare the criticality of schools and education to students, families, communities, and our economy, we would expect our provincial government to be looking at policies that are backed by research and data, and that seek to invest in education and in the success and well-being of Ontario’s students. 

IGNORING DATA, RESEARCH, AND SCIENCE SEEMS COMMONPLACE FOR PREMIER FORD

Now, the fact that the Ford government is proposing legislation to expand online learning without any data, research, or science supporting said legislation should, perhaps, come as no surprise. Even back in the summer, as Premier Ford and Minister Lecce were developing what was purported to be a safe back-to-school plan, they ignored data, research, and science.

In fact, in late August, Premier Ford was counting on school boards to work miracles to ensure schools were safe amidst the pandemic. Given that his government had ignored several components of what had been confirmed by data, research, and science to be integral to a safe school environment, such as proper ventilation, proper physical distancing, and any standard of good repair for public schools in Ontario, Ford’s confidence in school boards could be construed as simply passing the buck.

As we said to Premier Ford back in late August, “your government has treated public education and schools as an afterthought; been slow to provide guidance; continuously flip-flopped on said guidance; and, most disappointing is that your government has continued the long-standing provincial tradition of chronic and gross underfunding of public education and schools – while pushing accountability and responsibility for working miracles down to school boards, teachers, principals, and education workers.”

Fast forward to the third wave of COVID-19 in Ontario. Premier Ford and Minister Lecce have been clinging to the claim that Ontario’s schools are safe. And yet, several jurisdictions such as Peel and Toronto closed schools to in-person learning, with local public health agencies enacting Section 22 to break from the Province. One could argue that the degree of safety that has been experienced in schools since September has come at the expense of families in hot-spot COVID areas, who opted to keep their children home because they did not believe the school plan was safe. In essence, the Ford government relied on families making hard decisions about whether to send their children back to in-person learning. And, in the past week, Ford’s government relied on local public health agencies to make the hard decisions on closing schools. When will we see Premier Ford’s government start to use science, data, and research to make the hard decisions to provide some leadership amidst this ongoing pandemic?

AND JUST ONE MORE EXAMPLE OF FORD IGNORING SCIENCE, DATA, AND RESEARCH

Fix Our Schools is at a loss as to what to even say about the Ford government choosing to spend $850,000 on Pine-Sol disinfectants when the CDC has confirmed that while people can get infected with COVID-19 from contaminated surfaces, the risk is low, cleaning with soap or detergent in most instances is sufficient, and the most reliable way to prevent infection from surfaces is washing hands.

So Fix Our Schools would propose that a much better investment of this $850,000 would have been on increasing the number of caretakers in Ontario’s schools, whose jobs include the important task of ensuring soap dispensers are filled and in working order so that students can properly and readily wash their hands.

Research, science, and data abound in this age of information. And yet, Ford’s government consistently and consciously chooses to ignore research, science, and data.