Tag Archives: Doug Ford

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.

Onwards and Upwards But First …

January 5, 2021

Fix Our Schools was founded in 2014 with the goal of ensuring all of Ontario’s publicly funded schools were safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provided environments conducive to learning and working.  With some notable successes along the way, we continue to work towards this goal as we head into 2021. But first, a necessary reflection on the past year and on how Ontario’s provincial government handled school infrastructure in this unprecedented year.

Ontario’s school buildings began 2020 with at least a $16.3-billion repair backlog. While this number is staggering, it notably does not even include First Nations schools, portables, accessibility retrofits, water quality, air quality, or asbestos abatement.

Throughout a year like no other, Ontario’s school boards continued to be at the mercy of provincial funding and policies. While the Ford government maintained annual funding for school renewal and repairs at $1.4-billion/year, this level of funding has been shown to be grossly inadequate since disrepair in Ontario’s schools has continued to increase every year.

In fact, when the Ford government released its budget in November 2020, political economist Ricardo Tranjan declared it to be “really bad for Ontario education”.

https://twitter.com/ricardo_tranjan/status/1324491092147011584?s=20

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ford government actually shirked its responsibility to provide adequate, stable funding for schools and education when it ‘allowed’ school boards to dip into their own reserve funds to try to fund what was actually needed to ensure schools were safe, healthy environments.

Throughout 2020, the Ford government continued to drag its heels on new school builds and expansions across the province, leaving us almost 2 years behind in this process. 

When schools were shuttered in late March 2020 and left empty for months, the Ford government missed the opportunity to invest in school repairs and improvements, such as accessibility retrofits, that could have been done much more safely without students in these buildings. Even for repair and renewal projects that were particularly relevant amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, such as those focused on improving ventilation in schools, the Ford government dragged its heels in allocating any funding to school boards to take action on improvements. 

At the same time that Ontario’s provincial government was unable to take the necessary action to invest in school infrastructure that would provide safe, healthy environments for learning and working, especially amidst a pandemic, our federal government was doing very little to ensure First Nations schools were safe. Many of Ontario’s First Nations schools still do not even have clean drinking water, let alone the type of infrastructure that would be safe and healthy during a pandemic.

https://twitter.com/cbcreporter/status/1298973279923793920?s=20https://twitter.com/cbcreporter/status/1298973279923793920?s=20

The Ford government also failed to make needed changes to an outdated regulation guiding the eligibility for and use of Education Development Charges, so developers continued to get away without contributing to school infrastructure, from which they profit.

Our provincial government chose to ignore an opportunity to fund any outdoor education plans, which could have been a helpful component of a safe return to school in September. 

And, since taking office in June 2018, the Ford government has refused to publish updated disrepair data for Ontario’s 5,000 schools. This data is collected with taxpayer dollars, and citizens deserve transparency into the state of school buildings. 

Looking back on 2020, we realize a “silver lining” of the global pandemic relative to schools is that substantively more attention has been paid to the condition of school buildings. Ventilation, drinking water, and air quality may not be sexy topics, but Canadians now appreciate their importance. Media coverage of the state of school buildings was intense in 2020. With the ardent support of Fix Our School followers, we helped to keep a full conversation about safe, well-maintained schools in the press.

With your ongoing support, we intend to continue our work towards ensuring Ontario schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings for all students and teachers. Onwards and upwards to 2021.

A Shell Game: Ford Government’s Funding of Schools During a Pandemic

October 20, 2020
shell game
/ˈSHel ˌɡām/

noun

NORTH AMERICAN
  • a deceptive and evasive action or ploy, especially a political one.

This definition is applicable to how the Ford government has funded Ontario’s public schools and education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Premier Ford and Minister Lecce have repeatedly claimed that they will “spare no expense” to ensure the safety of Ontario’s children, teachers, and education workers. In fact, Ford is on record as claiming that “we have done absolutely everything, everything. We’re sparing nothing. Every idea possible, we’re putting into the classrooms.” These claims are false. They are a deceptive and evasive political ploy – a shell game if you will – where Ontario’s students, teachers, and education workers are the losers.

As the Toronto Star article entitled, “Ontario trumpeted its $1.3-billion back-to-school plan. But a closer analysis shows it’s all about muddy math” outlines, only $413-million of the $1.3-billion the Ford government claims has been provided is actually new money from the provincial government. Approximately $500-million of the $1.3-billion is meant to come out of school board reserve funds, money that these school boards have already allocated to important future expenses, such as capital improvements and retirement benefit obligations. So the numbers behind the government’s funding announcements are, in reality, far less than what parents have been led to believe.

Halton District School Board chair Andréa Grebenc said it well when she said, “It’s robbing Peter to pay Paul, really,” 

Ricardo Tranjan, a political economist and senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, has analyzed the provincial numbers and also concluded they simply do not add up. He has called the government’s claim that it is providing $1.3 billion “disingenuously inaccurate.”

As Fix Our Schools has noted previously, if Premier Ford’s primary concern was safety and he was genuine in his claim that his government would “spare no expense”, he would have announced a whole lot more funding a whole lot earlier. Instead, as one example of underfunding, Premier Ford’s government allocated $50-M for school boards to address HVAC and ventilation issues, an amount that nets out to a mere $10,000 per school in the province – and he announced this funding extremely late in the game for school boards to reasonably be able to conduct the work. 

Fix Our Schools is not proposing that money solves all the world’s problems. However, sufficient money is imperative if we believe that all of Ontario’s publicly funded schools ought to be safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings. Since 2014, we have been calling on successive provincial governments to ensure stable, adequate funding for schools. Amidst a global pandemic, this call to action becomes all the more urgent. Premier Ford and Minister Lecce: If you will not provide adequate, stable funding now – then when?

The Time to Invest in Publicly Funded Education is Now

December 3, 2019

Last week, the Ontario Public School Board Association (OPSBA) and Nanos Research released polling data regarding many public education issues. This data confirmed that Ontarians view money spent on publicly funded education as an important investment in Ontario’s future and that the provincial government should prioritize education spending over tackling the deficit. Over 90% of Ontarians supported investing in school maintenance and repairs.

Back in August, Premier Ford declared that his government was going to invest $13-billion in building new schools over the coming 10 years; and that his government was going to continue to invest $1.4-billion each year for school repairs.

Recognizing that there are many urgent issues to be addressed in the education sector at the moment, Fix Our Schools urges the Ford government to begin investing in building new schools in Ontario. Back in July 2019, Minister Lecce announced that the provincial government would finally resume the process to approve new school buildings after a year hiatus when zero new school buildings were approved in this province.  We’re still waiting to hear how this process is unfolding and we are still lamenting that this government’s actions allowed over a year to pass with zero investment in new school buildings. 

As Ontarians declared in the recent OPSBA and Nanos research polls, the time to invest in publicly funded education in Ontario is now. 

 

Doug Ford’s Government is Back at Queen’s Park

October 29, 2019

After the longest recess in a quarter-century, Ontario’s MPPs returned to Queen’s Park this week. According to the Globe and Mail,  Premier Ford has promised a new, less confrontational approach to governing the province. As per the Toronto Star, the first legislation of the new session focused on allowing bars and restaurants beyond security checkpoints in some airports to serve alcohol 24 hours a day.

Fix Our Schools continues to be a non-partisan, Ontario-wide, parent-led campaign calling for safe, healthy, well-maintained publicly funded schools. To achieve this goal, we ask Doug Ford’s government to please increase provincial funding for school repairs, renewal, operational maintenance and new school builds. We also ask for the province to provide predictable funding to school boards. Adequacy and stability of provincial funding is an absolute necessity for school boards to be efficient and effective in dealing with repair backlogs in their buildings.

Additionally, we ask that Doug Ford’s government please update and release disrepair and Facility Conditions Index information for Ontario’s schools in the same format that was previously released in October 2017. The public deserves transparency into this data. Only by tracking the impact of provincial funding on school conditions, will we be able to objectively measure the adequacy of this provincial funding and determine the way forward.

 

Back to School 2019 – First Time in Years Temperatures May Be Comfortable!

September 3, 2019

As students across Ontario prepare to head back to school this week, comfortable temperatures with daytime highs around 20 degrees are in the forecast for the first September in many years. This weather forecast will mean students, teachers and education workers will be learning and working in fairly comfortable temperatures for the first time in many years! Hurrah!

The vast majority of publicly funded schools across our province do not have air conditioning and the sweltering September temperatures of the past several years has meant unbearably hot class temperatures for many across the province. What a relief that this September, students, teachers and education workers alike can learn and work in comfort!

 

However, even with all the repairs and improvements that have been able to get done this past year at Ontario public schools thanks to stable provincial funding of $1.4-billion/year, the repair backlog at Ontario’s schools remains at a gobsmacking $15.9-billion. Photos of school disrepair vividly depict the types of environments Ontario students routinely face.

And, if we only look at Premier Ford’s riding of Etobicoke North, there is an alarming $178.4-million of disrepair in schools. This disrepair in Etobicoke North schools impacts students in myriad ways. At West Humber Collegiate, which needs $13.9-million of repairs, urgent items include:

  • Fire Alarm System renewal
  • Major Repair to Standard Foundations
  • Roofing

At Elmbank Junior Middle School, which needs $9.4-million of repairs, there are 21 repair items marked urgent!

More provincial funding is needed if we are ever going to eliminate the repair backlog in our children’s schools. In fact, economist Hugh Mackenzie suggests an additional $1.6-billion/year in provincial funding is required for the coming seven years if we are going to truly fix Ontario’s schools.

 

Doug Ford’s riding: $9.4-million of disrepair at Elmbank JMA and $13.9-million of disrepair at West Humber CI

June 11, 2019

Fix Our Schools was so pleased to be able to volunteer with Progress Toronto on June 8 to knock on doors in Etobicoke North – a riding that is represented by Premier Doug Ford and a riding that has $178.4-million of disrepair in its publicly funded schools.

On our way to canvass, we passed a couple of publicly funded schools, both of which look pretty good from the outside. Therefore, it can be easy for parents and the general public to think that these schools are in good shape. However, they’d be wrong.

At West Humber CI, $13.9-million of repairs are needed as per most recent data released, including 3 URGENT ones and 27 HIGH PRIORITY repairs. The 3 urgent repairs include: Fire Alarm System renewal, Major Repair to Standard Foundations – Parging Repair, and Roofing. So you can see that all three of these repairs, despite their being marked urgent in nature, remain invisible and unnoticeable until there is system failure. Students, teachers and education workers who all spend their days in this building would have no way of knowing the fire alarm system may not work until there was a real fire and it failed. The same can be said for the roof – it may be fine for another year or two or perhaps many leaks will emerge after the next rain storm, leading to damage inside the building and possible unsafe electrical situations. Would you want your child attending a school where the number one repair needed was Fire Alarm System renewal? 

At Elmbank Junior Middle Academy, $9.4-million of repairs are needed, including 21 repairs marked URGENT. 

Unfortunately, since so much of the disrepair in Ontario’s publicly funded schools is on the inside of the schools and since so much of the disrepair in Ontario’s schools is invisible, people often mistakenly assume that local school conditions must be good. After all, children spend their days in these publicly funded buildings so how could we have possibly allowed so much disrepair to accumulate in this important public infrastructure? 

We encourage you to click the link above to better understand how we have, indeed, allowed a gobsmacking $15.9-billlion of disrepair to accumulate in the school buildings where 2-million Ontario children spend their days. And we also encourage you to have a look at some of the photos we’ve collected over the years that illustrate some of the substandard conditions that students face in their schools.

 

School Buildings: Will it be Doug Ford’s Government That Finally Fixes Them?

October 18, 2018

“You own something – a house, a car, a stove, pair of shoes – anything worth keeping up. Sooner or later it comes time to maintain it because things don’t get better from neglect – they fall apart. A real conservative wants to maintain things so she doesn’t have to put out a lot more money to repair them down the road, when they either cost a lot more to fix or have to be replaced.”

The recent article entitled, “School buildings: Will the Tories let them fall apart?” in School Magazine explores how $15.9-billion of disrepair has been allowed to accumulate in Ontario’s schools under both Liberal and PC provincial governments of the last twenty years. The article starts with the quote above and theorizes that “real conservatism is all about careful, cautious planning”.

With this tenet in mind, we’d like to ask, “School buildings: Will Doug Ford’s government finally fix them?”. We’re cautiously optimistic that the answer is YES. 

Premier Ford has promised to…

Govern for the people. What act could be more “for the people” than to ensure that the 2-million children in this province who spend their days in publicly funded schools learn in safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings?

Reduce government waste. What is more wasteful than waiting for critical public infrastructure to fall apart before fixing it? Every homeowner knows that if you wait to replace your roof until the roof is actually leaking, it is a much more expensive undertaking than to have simply replaced your roof proactively. Complications like water damage, mould and rodents can significantly add to the overall expense. Some estimates put reactive maintenance at costing THREE TIMES more than proactive maintenance. We know that the vast majority of school repairs in Ontario are currently done reactively so we know that Premier Ford would agree this is an atrocious waste. We urge him to commit the funding required to truly Fix Ontario’s Schools so that school boards can start to actually proactively maintain Ontario’s schools.

Restore accountability and trust to government. For twenty years, four successive provincial governments grossly and chronically underfunded school repairs, often providing only ONE-TENTH of what industry standards suggest was the absolute minimum required to keep the schools safe and well-maintained. And yet, those same provincial governments failed to take accountability for the resulting disrepair, instead blaming school boards. Accountability and trust in government could be restored in Ontario through bold leadership that takes responsibility for these important public assets and ensures every Ontario school is a safe, healthy, well-maintained building that provides an environment conducive to learning.