Tag Archives: Education Development Charges

Onwards and Upwards But First …

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.

When will our provincial government allow all school boards to access Education Development Charges?

Our provincial government must take responsibility for the $15-billion of disrepair that has accumulated in Ontario’s schools. The 2015 Auditor-General’s report confirmed that $1.4 billion per year is needed to maintain Ontario schools in a state of good repair. However, actual annual funding in the last five years has ranged from only $150 million to $500 million. This gross underfunding of school infrastructure by our provincial government means that an unacceptable level of disrepair has accumulated in our public schools and will continue to worsen…unless funding solutions are found.

One avenue for new funding sources would be for the provincial government to change O. Reg 20/98, which guides the collection and use of Education Development Charges (EDCs). The existing regulation is now antiquated and prevents many school boards from receiving money from new condo/housing/commercial developments within that board. Furthermore, the existing regulation only allows school boards to use EDC money for purchasing new land – not for building new schools or building new additions or repairing existing schools.

Therefore, in Fix Our Schools’ Submission to the Ministry’s 2016/17 Funding Consultation, we recommended that the Ministry of Education change O. Reg 20/98 so that every School Board can benefit financially from new residential and commercial development within its boundaries; and can use Education Development Charges (EDCs) for repairs, capital projects, or purchasing new land. 

All 72 publicly funded School Boards in the province face capital repair backlogs, for a total of over $15-billion of disrepair in Ontario schools. The $11-billion in capital grants to School Boards over ten years that Premier Wynne and her government have committed is simply insufficient to address this issue. New funding solutions must be found. Given the ease with which a provincial regulation can be changed, when are Premier Wynne and Education Minister Sandals going to prioritize changing Regulation 20/98 as a new potential revenue source for many school boards in this province? Certainly, EDCs do not hold the potential to be the complete solution… but any new funding for school infrastructure in this province would be beneficial!

The two million children who attend Ontario public schools deserve safe, well-maintained schools that are conducive to learning, as do the adults who work in these buildings every day.

Education Development Charges (EDCs) 101

Fix Our Schools believes that the Provincial regulation guiding the collection and use of EDCs must be changed. The TDSB agrees, as do many other school boards across the province. We’ve been lobbying the Province for change and so has the TDSB.

Check these out to find out what the TDSB has been doing:

TDSB Press Release re: EDCs

TDSB EDC Report

TDSB Letter to Minister of Education re: EDCs

TDSB Letter to Premier re: EDCs 

 

TDSB’s $1 million deal with condo developer

The TDSB recently accepted $1 million from a developer to build a new playground in exchange for abandoning the plan to work alongside the City to fight the planned development at the upcoming Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) hearing. The proposed development casts a shadow over the entire school yard every morning, creating a sub-optimal play space for students.

Why would the TDSB agree to such a deal? Sadly, because it made sense when weighing the guaranteed $1 million from the developer against the uncertain $400,000 compensation if the OMB hearing resulted in a win.

Developers should be contributing financially to TDSB schools in communities where they build via Education Development Charges (EDCs).  However, due to current provincial regulations, the TDSB doesn’t qualify so instead, we see these one-off deals where developers only contribute to public schools when backed into a corner.

The Province must change the regulation guiding the collection and use of EDC’s so that TDSB schools benefit routinely from new development. The TDSB has been lobbying the Province  to do this since January, 2014 and Fix Our Schools has been lobbying the Province on this issue since May, 2014.  To find out more about EDCs, visit Education Development Charges 101