Tag Archives: Fix Our Schools

The Silver Lining: More Fresh Air via Outdoor Learning

November 24, 2020

In this COVID-pandemic, outdoors is the safest place to be. Some may, in fact, argue that even when we are not in the midst of a global pandemic, being outdoors is always going to provide better air quality and therefore better health outcomes.

The SickKids report that was commissioned by our provincial government to provide guidelines on how to safely reopen Ontario’s schools urged school boards and educators to incorporate outdoor learning activities into the curriculum. In fact, the SickKids report clearly stated that “transmission of the virus will likely be attenuated in outdoor settings, and outdoor play and learning have many benefits for children and youth”. Even Premier Doug Ford mused on the value of outdoor learning while talking to reporters in July, saying it was a “big highlight” to have a class outdoors under a tree.

For some students in Ontario, local schools and teachers have leveraged outdoor spaces to provide opportunities for outdoor learning. In a recent Ottawa Citizen article, we read that a Kemptville school uses the hundreds of acres they have available for students to frequently roam and to learn. Similiarly, an elementary school in Hull has been using a nearby forest for regular outdoor learning. This article notes that there is a historical precedent for moving classrooms outdoors — it has been done in the past during epidemics to prevent the spread of infection.

In North York, students from Gulfstream Public School have been using the area around a nearby pond, for outdoor education sessions focused on biology and art. Toronto District School Board (TDSB) trustee Christopher Mammoliti said his community has been hit hard by the pandemic, so he wanted to find green space to get students out of classrooms, citing that this step would serve “multiple purposes: mental health, physical well-being, as well as obviously doing your best to mitigate some of the risks from the transmission of the virus itself”.  Alice Casselman, former science teacher and founding president of the Association of Canadian Educational Resources (ACER), said that the COVID-pandemic has given outdoor educators “a new lease on life” since the pandemic is forcing a re-examination of outdoor education and its multitude of benefits: academic, social and mental health.

With the risk of COVID-19 transmission considered much lower outside, several schools in Rainbow District School Board in Ontario, the largest public school board in northern Ontario, have taken to holding some classes in the great outdoors, where students can enjoy the benefit of fresh air. Some of the outdoor classrooms involve logs and stumps, which can be used as chairs and tables for students, as well as large, outdoor blackboards.

We can also find other areas of the world that are embracing outdoor learning more during this global pandemic. For instance, New York City is offering an Outdoor Learning program that allows schools to hold classes outdoors in schoolyards, adjacent streets, and nearby park space. Schools in areas hardest-hit by COVID-19 with no outdoor space receive priority access to this newly implemented program. According to this Washington Post article, entitled, “In Denmark, the forest is the new classroom”, the COVID-pandemic has led many schools across the country to embrace outdoor learning.

An interesting article entitled, “What if Schools Viewed Outdoor Learning as Plan A?”, offers some great tips for schools who want to try outdoor learning for the first time. It also shares how various US-based outdoor education advocacy groups have banded together to increase outdoor learning opportunities across the US. As Sharon Danks, the CEO of Green Schoolyards America, states, “neither insufficient money, limited outdoor space, nor inclement weather should stand in the way of a school doing outdoor learning”. A Portland educator echoes many teachers’ experiences with outdoor learning, “I thought kids would be a lot more distracted, but I don’t find that. The open-air absorbs the noise of talking and teaching, even if classes are nearby. Fresh air seems to help regulate mood and decreases restlessness and boredom. 

Recognizing that we are heading into colder temperatures firmly in the midst of a frightening second wave of COVID-19, how do parents and educators in Ontario feel about outdoor learning? What is being done outdoors at your local school? What resources are being leveraged that can be shared? Fix Our Schools would love to hear from you!

MPP Sandhu: $21.1-M of Disrepair in Brampton West Schools

November 19, 2020

Dear MPP Sandhu,

Did you know there is $21.1-million of disrepair in the publicly funded schools in your riding of Brampton West? We wanted to share the following details of disrepair in each school in your riding in the hope that this detailed information would underscore the importance of developing standards of good repair for Ontario schools and also the importance of providing the adequate, stable provincial funding to school boards required for them to meet those new standards and eliminate the $16.3-billion (as at total disrepair released by the Minister of Education in November 2019) repair backlog that plagues Ontario’s schools:

Total disrepair in each publicly funded school in Brampton West:

Guardian Angels  $                         647,946
Our Lady of Peace Sep S  $                      1,967,080
St. Aidan Catholic  $                            70,000
St. Bonaventure Catholic  $                         230,000
St. Edmund Campion  $                         345,000
St. Joseph Sep S (Brampton)  $                      1,133,201
St. Josephine Bahkita Catholic Elementary School  $                         255,000
St. Lucy Catholic  $                         310,000
St. Maria Goretti E S  $                         802,049
St. Roch Catholic S.S.  $                            95,000
St. Ursula  $                         517,140
BeattyFleming Sr PS  $                      2,973,684
Brisdale P.S.  $                         194,518
Burnt Elm P.S.  $                         253,608
Cheyne Middle School  $                            60,550
David Suzuki SS  $                         139,029
Edenbrook Hill Public School  $                         188,200
Fletcher’s Meadow S.S.  $                      1,568,709
Homestead P.S.  $                         331,073
Huttonville PS  $                      4,995,775
McCrimmon Middle School  $                         132,109
Northwood PS  $                      3,164,942
Rowntree PS  $                         230,054
Royal Orchard M.S.  $                         131,286
Worthington PS  $                         379,370

School conditions matter. They impact student learning, attendance, and health.

We ask that you and your government please prioritize schools as critical infrastructure and take the steps necessary to ensure that the disrepair in all of Ontario’s publicly funded schools is eliminated and that schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working. We look forward to hearing back from you with details on your plan to Fix Ontario’s Schools.

PLEASE NOTE: Fix Our Schools is relying on the most recent disrepair data provided by the Ministry of Education in Fall 2017 and has mapped postal codes provided by the Ministry for each school to riding postal code information from a third party. Therefore, it is possible that there may be small errors in the data provided here and we would be grateful if community members would contact us with any errors. 

Fix Our Schools Calls for Transparency + Adequate, Stable Funding

November 17, 2020

Fix Our Schools is calling upon the Ford government to:

  • Resume the transparency into school disrepair in Ontario that was first introduced by the previous Liberal government in 2016, by releasing updated Facilities Condition Index/Disrepair data on Ontario’s schools in a comparable format to the data that was released in November 2017, so that the public can assess whether the annual funding level of $1.4-billion for school repairs is sufficient to fix Ontario’s schools.
  • Provide the adequate, stable funding for school infrastructure that we have been outlining is required since 2017, and have outlined in every subsequent budget submission we have made since that time.
  • Conduct an independent and comprehensive review of the education funding formula, as has also been requested by Ontario’s Auditor-General as per this quote from page 495 of the 2017 report: “(The Education) Funding formula uses out-of-date benchmarks and is due for a comprehensive external review. In 2002, an independent task force reviewed the Ministry’s complex formula for determining school boards’ funding. The task force recommended that the Ministry annually review and update the benchmarks used in the formula and conduct a more comprehensive overall review of the formula every five years. Fifteen years later, the Ministry has not commissioned another independent review of the (education) funding formula.” Given this quote is from a 2017 report, we can now say that it has been a full seventeen years since the Ministry of Education has conducted an independent review of a funding formula that has led to, among other things, a $16.3-billion repair backlog in Ontario’s schools.

Here is a brief history of events that has led Fix Our Schools to these calls for action:

In August 2016, after concerted pressure from the Fix Our Schools network, the Liberal provincial government finally released the disrepair data for Ontario’s publicly funded schools that it had been collecting for years using our taxpayer dollars. This new transparency was a huge win for Ontario students, parents, teachers, and education workers because it enabled a common understanding that all 72 of Ontario’s school boards faced a significant level of school disrepair. In fact, this data release confirmed that an unfathomable $15-billion of disrepair had been allowed to accumulate in Ontario’s 5,000 schools.

The 2015 Ontario Auditor-General report that had been released a few months prior to the school disrepair data revealed that the amount of annual provincial funding required to maintain Ontario’s schools in a state of good repair had always been approximately $1.4-billion/year. “However, actual annual funding on a school year basis over the last five years has been $150 million a year, increasing to $250 million in 2014/15 and $500 million in 2015/16,” thus clarifying that gross and chronic provincial underfunding – in some years as little as one-tenth of what was actually needed – was the root cause of the identified $15-billion of disrepair in Ontario’s schools as at 2016. In this same report, several other concerns were expressed by the Auditor-General regarding the inadequacy of provincial funding to ensure Ontario’s students learned in safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provided environments conducive to learning:

Portables: As per the Auditor-General, there were “over 100,000 students in temporary accommodations (portables), and about 10% of schools operating at over 120% capacity in the province. Although portables are needed to provide some flexibility to address changes in school capacity, existing funding is not sufficient to rehabilitate the existing portfolio and to replace these structures with more permanent accommodation, in some cases.“

New School Buildings: As per the Auditor-General, “About $2.6 billion worth of projects are submitted to the Ministry of Education by school boards for funding consideration every year. However, over the last five years, the Ministry has approved only about a third of the projects every year, since its annual funding envelope under the program has averaged only about $500 million on a school year basis.”

In June 2016, Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government increased provincial funding for school repairs to the $1.4-billion/year that both industry standards and the Ontario Auditor-General suggested always ought to have been going to school repairs. While Fix Our Schools was thrilled that annual funding for school repairs had been increased by $1.1-billion per year, we cautioned that without additional funding to account for the almost two decades when provincial funding was a mere fraction of what was needed, and during which time $15-billion of disrepair had accrued, we would continue to see overall disrepair in Ontario schools increase – not decrease.

When the Wynne Liberals seemed slow on providing an annual update on the disrepair data for schools, Fix Our Schools continued to pressure the Province for ongoing transparency into the state of Ontario’s publicly funded schools. As we pointed out in this September 2017 blog entitled, Have we even stopped the bleeding on the $15-B repair backlog in Ontario’s schools?, citizens would have no idea whether the new $1.4-B/year level of funding was serving to decrease the repair backlog unless the Province released annual disrepair data. We also pointed out that this type of accountability seemed entirely reasonable.

Finally, after this pressure, the Liberals did release updated data on school disrepair in November 2017. Unsurprisingly, we saw an increase of almost a billion dollars of disrepair, with a total of $15.9-billion of disrepair logged by the third-party engineer firm hired by the Province to conduct assessments of Ontario’s schools.

Since that time, Fix Our Schools has consistently provided funding approaches that would fix Ontario’s schools. Our recommendations have been consistently ignored and, again unsurprisingly, disrepair in Ontario’s schools has continued to increase. The latest total disrepair data we have gleaned from the Ford government was actually through NDP Education Critic Marit Stiles after her November 2019 Estimates Committee revealed that total school disrepair had increased from $15.9-billion in November 2017 to $16.3-billion in November 2019.

We have no lens into the details of the most current school disrepair data because, shockingly, the Ford government has refused any level of transparency into this data which is collected using taxpayer money and ought to be made public annually.

Which leads us back to the beginning with the three calls to action above.

 

Ontario’s Budget and What Ontario’s Auditor-General Might REALLY Say About Education Funding?

November 10, 2020

On November 5, the Ford government released the 2020-21 Ontario Budget: Ontario’s Action Plan: Protect, Support, Recover. According to OPSBA, education sector funding is projected to be $31-billion with this new budget, an increase of approximately $800-million over last year’s $30.2-billion. While, of course, an increase of $800-million over last year’s budget sounds like a lot of money for the Ford government to allocate for education, let’s consider the following.

The federal government is providing $763.3-million to Ontario specifically to support COVID-safety in schools, which means that actually, the Ford government has chosen to keep its provincial funding for public education virtually the same as last year, despite the fact that this has been and continues to be a completely unprecedented time in the world – and in public education.

In the midst of an even more concerning second-wave of COVID-19, Ontario’s school boards face ongoing unexpected costs to address the reality of public education amidst a global pandemic: additional staffing, IT devices for staff and students, HVAC and air ventilation, PPE, cleaning supplies, caretaker costs, and student transportation to name a few. As economist Ricardo Tranjan bluntly stated, this provincial budget is really bad news for Ontario’s public education system and its schools. Premier Ford and Minister Lecce have been saying for months that their government will spare no expense to ensure that Ontario’s schools are safe. In reality, their government is not making significant investments in public schools and education.  

https://twitter.com/ricardo_tranjan/status/1324491092147011584

 

When Fix Our Schools considered the elements of the provincial budget pertaining specifically to school infrastructure, we were surprised to read in the budget document that the Ford government will provide “$13 billion in capital grants over 10 years to build new schools and renew existing schools across Ontario, to ensure that students have safe and modern education environments in which to learn and thrive. COVID‑19 has underscored the importance of this commitment”.

Using some simple math to divide this $13-billion commitment over 10 years yields a provincial investment of $1.3-billion/year, which, according to the budget document, is meant to cover both building new schools and renewing existing schools. Given that annual provincial funding for only renewal of existing schools has been $1.4-billion/year since June 2016, this announcement in the budget represents a significant proposed cut to provincial funding for schools. Since our provincial government has finally resumed the process of approving new school builds after an almost two-year hiatus, Fix Our Schools simply cannot make the math work on where money will come from for those new school builds if the government is going to continue funding school renewal and repairs at $1.4-billion/year. Again, this smacks of a big cut to funding for public schools.

Premier Ford and Minister Lecce should be ashamed at how little their government is doing to ensure students have safe and modern education environments. Even if 2020 had unfolded in a much more expected manner, Fix Our Schools would have been disappointed in this funding commitment. Given how the COVID pandemic has laid bare the criticality of investing to ensure our schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning, we are literally gobsmacked at the lack of real investment the Ford government is making in Ontario’s schools.

The budget also stated that the provincial government will provide “$1.4 billion for the 2020–21 school year for facility repair and renewal, which continues to meet the recommended funding level by the Auditor General of Ontario to preserve the condition of Ontario’s school facilities.”

Firstly, Fix Our Schools was shocked that our provincial government would wish to “preserve the condition of Ontario’s school facilities”, when the repair backlog for these buildings sits at $16.3-billion and wondered why our provincial government would not wish to ensure that, instead, these school buildings were safe, healthy and well-maintained? Secondly, we were shocked by this incredibly disingenuous and out-of-context reference  to the following statement from five years ago on page 294-295 of Ontario Auditor-General’s 2015 report (the last time school infrastructure and associated provincial funding were investigated),

“An investment of about $1.4 billion per year based on an industry average of 2.5% of the $55 billion replacement value is estimated to be required to maintain the schools in a state of good repair. But actual annual funding in the last five years had been $150 million a year, increasing to $250 million in 2014/15 and $500 million in 2015/16.”  So the Auditor-General’s statement presumes that Ontario’s public schools were in a state of good repair at that time, which they were not. This fact was acknowledged when the 2015 report went on to provide the important context that during the many years when provincial funding has been grossly inadequate, an enormous repair backlog of $14-15-billion had accumulated in Ontario’s schools.

Therefore, if Ontario’s schools were not in a state of good repair in 2015, a provincial government may have expected that if they increased their annual funding to the industry standard of $1.4-billion, perhaps the overall $15-billion repair backlog could be prevented from growing exponentially. However, a reasonable person, considering an old and ever-aging stock of school buildings, could never have presumed that all of a sudden investing the minimum industry standard after almost two decades of providing grossly inadequate funding, would result in eliminating the overall repair backlog to achieve the safe, healthy, well-maintained schools that all Ontario students deserve.

Back in June 2016, when Kathleen Wynne’s government bowed to the pressure Fix Our Schools had been instrumental in creating, and increased renewal and repair funding for schools to $1.4-billion/year, Fix Our Schools was quoted as saying,

“Over the past two decades, Ontario has dug a $15-billion hole of disrepair in our publicly funded schools”, says Krista Wylie, a parent, and co-founder of the Fix Our Schools Campaign. “With this new funding commitment of $1.4-billion/year for school repairs, we’ve stopped the digging but a large hole remains. This Fall, children will still return to aging classrooms with leaking roofs – so we stay committed to working with the provincial government and Ontario’s school boards to ensure we Fix Our Schools.”

At that time, we also called upon the provincial government for a long-term funding plan that would address the $15-billion repair backlog that had accumulated in Ontario’s schools over the past two decades.

So, what do we think Ontario’s Auditor-General would really say today about this $1.4-billion/year provincial funding for school repair and renewal? Well, we believe she would look at the facts, which are simple and as follows:

  • Provincial funding for school repairs and renewal was increased to the $1.4-billion cited in the 2015 Ontario Auditor-General report in June 2016, and has been at this level since that time.
  • In that same time period, the repair backlog in Ontario’s schools (as measured by a third-party engineering firm, but which does not include portables) has increased from $15-billion to a gobsmacking $16.3-billion, despite this supposed adequate level of provincial funding. 

As final support for our argument that Ontario’s Auditor-General would not support the Ford government’s approach to funding schools and education, we cite page 429 of the 2017 Ontario Auditor-General report, the last time that anything to do with public education and schools was examined by her office and look to the following statement:

“Our more significant audit findings are as follows:

• (The Education) Funding formula uses out-of-date benchmarks and is due for a comprehensive external review. In 2002, an independent task force reviewed the Ministry’s complex formula for determining school boards’ funding. The task force recommended that the Ministry annually review and update the benchmarks used in the formula and conduct a more comprehensive overall review of the formula every five years. Fifteen years later, the Ministry has not commissioned another independent review of the (education) funding formula.”

So, the Fix Our Schools campaign believes that the Ontario Auditor-General never suggested that $1.4-billlion/year for school repair and renewal was going to be sufficient to restore Ontario’s schools to be safe, healthy, and well-maintained buildings. And, we are certain that the Auditor-General would not support a provincial funding approach to school maintenance that sees overall disrepair continue to grow at an alarming rate. This is not good public policy. This is not a responsible approach to taking care of public assets. And this is not what Ontario’s students, teachers, and education workers deserve in terms of a learning and working environment. What we believe the Auditor-General would support is a review of the provincial education funding formula that leads to adequate, stable provincial funding for the real needs within our public schools.

How First Nations Schools Are Faring Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic

November 5, 2020

First Nations schools are funded by the Canadian federal government, whereas other publicly funded schools are the province’s financial responsibility. As provinces across the country were determining the safety measures that needed to be in place for public schools to reopen in September, inexplicably, First Nations schools were largely left to handle preparations themselves, without any resources or support. In fact, only in late August did the federal government announce that it would provide $112-million in funding for schools on reserves to help pay for things such as ventilation, personal protective equipment, and cleaning supplies. Unsurprisingly, by mid-September, these dollars had not yet started to find their way to First Nations schools.

On October 30, CBC covered that the federal government had released $200-million more in pandemic support for Indigenous communities to target childcare, education, and infrastructure. First Nations school infrastructure has frequently been noted as being overcrowded and in very poor condition. Therefore, amidst a global pandemic, sufficient and timely funding to address safety concerns should have been paramount.

Even though First Nations schools are funded federally, in an Ontario funding announcement the last week of October, the provincial government said that $6.5-million of the $1-billion announced would be directed toward Indigenous and on-reserve education, through the Ministry of Infrastructure in collaboration with the Ministries of Education and Indigenous Affairs. In Saskatchewan, more than 20 First Nations schools have closed due to COVID-19 fears, according to an October 30 CBC article.

Fix Our Schools believes that the federal and provincial funding that has been provided is likely far from sufficient to ensure all First Nations school infrastructure is safe, healthy, and well-maintained. We urge further steps by both provincial governments and the federal government towards ensuring adequate and stable funding for all First Nations schools and Indigenous children.

$700-M in New Funding Announced for Education Projects

November 3, 2020

Ontario’s provincial budget will be released on Thursday, November 5. This budget was originally planned for much earlier in the year but the COVID-19 pandemic has understandably delayed its release.

As a part of the pre-budget consultation conducted in early 2020, Fix Our Schools sent in this written submission to the Ministry of Education and made this presentation to the Committee of Finance and Economic Affairs. In both instances, Fix Our Schools made the following asks of Doug Ford’s provincial government:

1) Integrate the guiding principles of adequacy, affordability, equity, stability, flexibility, and accountability into your government’s approach to funding public education.

2) Develop a standard of good repair for all of Ontario’s publicly funded schools, which goes beyond logging disrepair to include issues such as: classroom temperatures, lead in water, air quality, washroom & lunchroom conditions; and fund this standard.

3) Commit the additional $1.6-billion/year investment required to eliminate the $16.3-billion of disrepair in Ontario’s publicly funded schools in the coming 7-8 years

4) Continue to collect school disrepair data; and resume the practice adopted by the previous Liberal government of publicly releasing annual updates on this school disrepair data; adding portables to this process.

5) Consider the 2-million children who spend their days in Ontario’s publicly funded school buildings in every decision and interaction you have relative to education. Schools are critical infrastructure that serve not only as places of learning but also places of work, places for daycare, and important community hubs. Your government is in the lead role for working collaboratively to develop the funding solutions needed to solve the massive problem of disrepair and poor conditions in Ontario’s schools.

Once learning that Doug Ford’s government was planning to resume the budget process, Fix Our Schools resent our original submission, noting that the following urgent demands on school infrastructure (some of which have simply been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, while others have been precipitated by it) must also be addressed by this upcoming budget:

  • HVAC and ventilation must be optimized in all classrooms
  • Optimum indoor air quality and humidity must be optimized in all classrooms
  • Technology that has been lent out by schools to accommodate at-home learning must be replaced for in-school learners
  • Safe drinking water must be available in all schools, including First Nations schools
  • Caretaking and operational maintenance must be increased to ensure soap dispensers are always filled, schools are as clean and sanitary as possible at all times, and that routine maintenance of schools that is done by caretakers can also be readily accomplished

Surprisingly, a few days after announcing that the provincial budget would be released November 5, Premier Ford and Education Minister Lecce announced that up to $700-million in funding for education-related projects, to be nominated and administered by the Ministry of Education. This funding is part of the federal government’s Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program, so Fix Our Schools is pleased to finally see federal funding released by the Ford government to be spent on school infrastructure. This new funding has been dubbed the “COVID-19 Resilience Infrastructure Stream: Education Related (CVRIS-EDU)”. 

We know that good ventilation, physical distancing, and handwashing are all critical aspects of preventing the spread of COVID-19. Therefore, Fix Our Schools was pleased to see that CVRIS-EDU funding is intended to support retrofits, repairs, and upgrades to school board facilities to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by supporting health and safety.

Fix Our Schools does have concerns that the provincial process for school boards to obtain access to this funding is expedient and streamlined. Similarly, we would like assurances that this funding will be distributed equitably between all 72 Ontario school boards. In reading the details issued by the government, there is nothing specified that would ensure any equity of distribution in this funding among Ontario’s school boards.

 

MPP Clark: $107-Million of Disrepair in Leeds-Grenville-Thousand Islands and Rideau Lake

October 29, 2020

Dear MPP Clark

Did you know there is $107-million of disrepair in the publicly funded schools in your riding of Leeds-Grenville-Thousand Islands and Rideau Lake? We commend you for signing the Fix Our Schools Pledge during the election, and making the personal commitment to ensure all Ontario’s schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working.

We wanted to share the following details of disrepair in each school in your riding in the hope that this detailed information would underscore the importance of developing standards of good repair for Ontario schools and also the importance of providing the adequate, stable provincial funding to school boards required for them to meet those new standards and eliminate the $16.3-billion repair backlog (as of November 2019) that plagues Ontario’s schools:

Total disrepair in each publicly funded school in Leeds-Grenville-Thousand Islands and Rideau Lake:

J. L. Jordan  $                    476,571
St. Edward  $                    590,767
St. Francis Xavier  Brockville  $                1,260,701
St. John Bosco  Brockville  $                    331,015
St. John CHS  $                4,747,481
St. Joseph  Gananoque  $                    276,693
St. Joseph  Toledo  $                    120,219
St. Mary CHS  $                1,448,145
Athens District High School  $                3,153,473
Brockville Collegiate Institute  $                5,236,600
Centennial ’67 Public School  $                1,262,526
Commonwealth Public School  $                3,987,977
Front of Yonge Public School  $                    451,451
Gananoque Secondary School  $              10,093,658
Linklater Public School  $                3,497,574
Lombardy Public School  $                2,787,549
Lyn Public School  $                1,695,599
Maynard Public School  $                4,366,558
Meadowview Public School  $                      61,812
OxfordOnRideau Public School  $                2,656,199
Pineview Public School  $                1,140,588
Prince of Wales Public School  $                4,926,687
Rideau Centennial Elementary School  $                1,708,323
Rideau District High School  $                6,606,508
Rideau Vista Public School  $                1,709,871
South Crosby Public School  $                2,481,787
South Edwardsburg PS  $                2,357,611
South Grenville District High School  $              11,148,722
Sweets Corners Elementary School  $                2,663,287
The Stewart School  $                    128,842
Thousand Islands Secondary School  $              12,315,593
Toniata Public School  $                1,679,841
TR Leger – Prescott  $                1,980,814
Vanier Public School  $                3,275,453
Wellington Elementary School  $                1,210,162
Westminster Public School  $                3,128,186
ÉÉC AngeGabriel  $                      60,156

School conditions matter. They impact student learning, attendance, and health.

We ask that you and your government please prioritize schools as critical infrastructure and take the steps necessary to ensure that the disrepair in all of Ontario’s publicly funded schools is eliminated and that schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working. We look forward to hearing back from you with details on your plan to Fix Ontario’s Schools.

PLEASE NOTE: Fix Our Schools is relying on the most recent disrepair data provided by the Ministry of Education in Fall 2017 and has mapped postal codes provided by the Ministry for each school to riding postal code information from a third party. Therefore, it is possible that there may be small errors in the data provided here and we would be grateful if community members would contact us with any errors. 

Technology is Critical Infrastructure in Schools to Delivery Curriculum

October 27, 2020

When the COVID pandemic shuttered schools back in March, millions of dollars worth of technology was, understandably, taken from Ontario’s public schools and redistributed to students who needed this technology in order to access online learning. When Ontario’s public schools opened their doors again in September, the majority of the technology that was borrowed has not been returned to those schools. Again – for good reasons. Many students have opted to attend on-line school this year and, for many high school students in Ontario, online learning is a significant component of their education, if they opted for in-school learning.

All of these decisions make perfect sense.

What makes zero sense is that our provincial government has done absolutely nothing to ensure that the students who opted to return to in-school learning also have access to the technology that they require for learning. In fact, Fix Our Schools is starting to hear from parents and teachers alike that the new provincial math curriculum (that includes a coding component and therefore demands access to technology) requires students to “bring their own device” to school or to conduct their work at home so that curriculum requirements can be met.

The inequity of this situation is appalling and Fix Our Schools calls upon our provincial government to immediately release new funding to school boards to be able to ensure that every school in the province is able to provide the technology required for students to meet curriculum requirements.

The last time our provincial government announced any funding for technology in schools was back on June 18, 2020 when Minister Lecce proudly announced a paltry sum of $15-million in funding for technology in schools. To illustrate just how inadequate this funding level was to meet the real needs for technology in schools, we point to a recent Q&A post on the Toronto District School Board website:

What are the TDSB’s key fundraising and donation priorities for 2020-21? 

A: The TDSB’s key fundraising priorities for 2020-21 are:

  • Technology: There continues to be a need for technology to ensure that all students are supported. The TDSB has a plan to replace the devices that were borrowed from schools and sent to students to support virtual learning. However, this will take time. The TDSB is planning to spend approximately $15M for new technology and any additional fundraising support would be used to supplement this technology.

So the country’s largest school board has been able to find $15-M in its budget (which means that some other important line item on this budget is going unfunded this year!) to begin to replace the technology that has been borrowed from schools and to provide additional technology for students who need technology at home to support their learning. The TDSB is relying on fundraising dollars to supplement its technology needs for schools and students, clearly acknowledging in its statements above that their $15-M spend on technology for this year is not going to be sufficient.

The TDSB is just one school board out of 72 school boards in this province. So, if the entire $15-M amount of new funding provided by our provincial government in the face of the COVID-pandemic is not even sufficient for one school board to completely meet its technology requirements for schools and students, then clearly – this level of provincial funding is grossly inadequate. 

Fix Our Schools believes that we could have agreed years ago that technology, as well as fast, stable wifi, is a critical element of the Ontario public school infrastructure in order to accommodate “21st-century learning”. In the face of the current high school learning model in many school boards, as well as the recent provincial changes to Ontario’s math curriculum (which includes coding and therefore necessitates access to technology), the criticality of technology within our school infrastructure has become even more pronounced.

Fix Our Schools believes that our provincial government is being grossly negligent by failing to provide the required funding to all school boards to be able to quickly ensure that the technology and wifi requirements for all schools and students are met as soon as possible.

 

MPP Calandra: $33.6-Million of Disrepair in Markham-Stouffville Schools

October 22, 2020

Dear MPP Calandra

Did you know there is $33.6-million of disrepair in the publicly funded schools in your riding of Markham-Stouffville? We wanted to share the following details of disrepair in each school in your riding in the hope that this detailed information would underscore the importance of developing standards of good repair for Ontario schools and also the importance of providing the adequate, stable provincial funding to school boards required for them to meet those new standards and eliminate the $16.3-billion repair backlog (as of November 2019) that plagues Ontario’s schools:

Total disrepair in each publicly funded school in Markham-Stouffville Riding:

St. Brigid CES  $                                                   67,897
St. Brother Andre CHS  $                                              5,250,585
St. Edward CES  $                                              2,063,934
St. Julia Billiart CES  $                                                   21,000
St. Kateri Tekakwitha CES  $                                                 854,932
St. Mark CES  $                                              2,186,540
St. Patrick (Markham) CES  $                                              2,949,215
Cornell Village PS  $                                                 186,224
David Suzuki PS  $                                                   20,280
E T Crowle PS  $                                              1,089,700
Franklin Street PS  $                                              1,538,745
Glad Park PS  $                                                 872,547
Greensborough PS  $                                                 250,400
Harry Bowes PS  $                                                   20,280
James Robinson PS  $                                              2,803,665
Legacy PS  $                                                 750,000
Little Rouge PS  $                                                   80,100
Markham DHS  $                                                 259,100
Markville SS  $                                              2,400,657
Mount Joy PS  $                                                 196,000
Oscar Peterson PS  $                                                   20,280
Ramer Wood PS  $                                              1,122,600
Reesor Park PS  $                                              2,428,834
Roy H Crosby PS  $                                              2,057,050
Sam Chapman PS  $                                                   54,100
Summitview PS  $                                              2,204,631
William Armstrong PS  $                                              1,696,929

School conditions matter. They impact student learning, attendance, and health.

We ask that you and your government please prioritize schools as critical infrastructure and take the steps necessary to ensure that the disrepair in all of Ontario’s publicly funded schools is eliminated and that schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working. We look forward to hearing back from you with details on your plan to Fix Ontario’s Schools.

PLEASE NOTE: Fix Our Schools is relying on the most recent disrepair data provided by the Ministry of Education in Fall 2017 and has mapped postal codes provided by the Ministry for each school to riding postal code information from a third party. Therefore, it is possible that there may be small errors in the data provided here and we would be grateful if community members would contact us with any errors. 

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?