Tag Archives: Funding

Education Stakeholders Agree

February 8, 2022

Ontario’s Finance Minister Bethlenfalvy has until March 31st to table a new provincial budget. Accordingly, the Ford government has been running its pre-budget consultation process in recent weeks. However, the approach being used to this pre-budget consultation is different to that of previous governments in this province. The former Liberal government, for instance, held town hall-style consultations that were open to members of the public and to journalists; and ensured that all submissions and presentations were delivered to the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs so that all input was on the public record.

In stark contrast, the Ford government’s approach to this consultation seems to lack transparency, and does not include members of the public. According to NDP Finance critic Catherine Fife, “the PC members are promoting these consultations as public consultations, but they are not.” Instead, Michael Parsa, parliamentary assistant to the Finance Minister, has been hosting invite-only “conversations with community members” attended by cabinet ministers, local PC MPPs, CEO’s and finance ministry officials. In lieu of a formal public record, Parsa has been sharing screenshots on social media. 

Apparently, “copious notes” are also taken from the Zoom presentations, but these are not shared as a matter of public record, and all members of the legislature do not appear to receive these notes or have access to pre-budget submissions from all stakeholders. Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner wants all pre-budget submissions to be made available to every member of the legislature, stating that, “We need transparency and collaboration to ensure this year’s budget will adequately address the multiple crises facing all Ontarians”.

Fix Our Schools agrees wholeheartedly with the concerns about the lack of transparency in this pre-budget consultation by the Ford government. Indeed, we believe that an effective and efficient provincial government would embrace: accountability and responsibility; effective and timely communication; authentic stakeholder engagement; and transparency.

As top priorities, Fix Our Schools’ pre-budget submission called on the provincial government to:

As we looked at the input from other education stakeholders, we found that many echoed our calls to action. For instance, the Ontario Catholic Teachers’ Association’s (OECTA) pre-budget submission noted the $16.8-B repair backlog that continues to grow each year in Ontario’s publicly funded schools and called upon the provincial government to “provide immediate, stable, and sufficient annual funding for infrastructure and repairs“. Noting how the COVID pandemic has revealed the criticality of indoor air quality and ventilation to public health, OECTA also called upon the Province to, “act proactively and make the necessary investments to ensure that all schools have ventilation systems that meet the health and safety standards set by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), effectively reducing the airborne spread of COVID-19. To ensure that this process is transparent, the government must also institute a provincial standard for air quality measurements in schools, with publicly available metrics to indicate whether standards are being met.”

Similarly, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) emphasized in their pre-budget submission that students and education workers need safer, healthier, and accessible schools. OSSTF highlighted the $16.8 billion repair backlog in Ontario’s schools and stated that, “the government must address the repair backlog with additional funding by increasing the out-of-date benchmarks for pupil accommodation. The School Operations Grant must be funded to a level that will maintain the good repair of buildings so that Ontario’s backlog stops growing. As well, further funding is necessary to enhance the accessibility of schools to meet the 2025 deadline of the Ontarians with Disabilities Act.”

The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario’s (ETFO) pre-budget submission also included asks on improving school infrastructure, noting how the pandemic has exacerbated concerns and how the provincial government has failed to provide appropriate funding to meet the needs of all students. Noting the massive school repair backlog in Ontario, ETFO’s pre-budget submission stated that “the pandemic has highlighted the poor physical condition of many public schools and the impact physical infrastructure can have on the learning conditions for students and the working conditions for teachers and education workers.” ETFO’s submission also emphasized the need for additional funding to improve ventilation and air quality in schools, the importance of ASHRAE guidelines for minimum ventilation standards, and the need for additional funding to ensure that data is collected on indoor air quality in classrooms and compared against a standard. 

The pre-budget submission by the Ontario School Boards’ Association (OPSBA) stated clearly that “school boards require strong, predictable and equitable education funding in order to set the conditions that promote and sustain improved student achievement and well-being”, and included a designated section on capital and facilities funding. OPSBA suggested that provincial funding for heating, ventilation, and air condition (HVAC) systems was even more critical during the COVID pandemic and asked for more transparency, and increased capital funding benchmarks.

Clearly, other education stakeholders also recognize the need for:

  • adequate, stable provincial funding for schools and education
  • standards and data to ensure those standards are being met
  • a focus on indoor air quality and ventilation in schools

Sadly, with regard to standards for indoor air quality, we noted that the scant “standards” the Ford government had put in place around HEPA filters has been diluted so that the Ministry’s expectation is that HEPA Filters would only be needed in kindergarten classrooms and occupied learning spaces without mechanical ventilation.

This weak “standard” for HEPA filter placement in learning spaces would explain why we have heard from so many across the province without a HEPA filter in their classroom:

And, quite frankly, without any measurement and data collection to understand the actual quality of the indoor air in classrooms, standards are not particularly effective anyways.

We need a provincial government that is committed to standards, data collection to compare against those standards, and adequate, stable provincial funding for Ontario schools. Currently, we do not have such a government. The next provincial election is approaching quickly and with it, comes an opportunity to demand more for Ontario’s 2-million children who spend their days at school.

More Proof that School Conditions Matter; and Solutions to Improve Ontario’s School Conditions

December 7, 2021

More Proof that School Conditions Matter

Fix Our Schools began is a parent-led, non-partisan, Ontario-wide campaign focused on ensuring all publicly funded school buildings, portables and schoolyards are safe, healthy, well-maintained, and provide environments conducive to learning and working. Since we launched in 2014, we have always believed that school conditions matter. Taking care of the capital assets we call public schools makes good financial sense, and has also been shown to improve the health, learning, attendance and performance of the learners and workers who spend their days at school. 

A September, 2021 study led by Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that, “the air quality within an office can have significant impacts on employees’ cognitive function, including response times and ability to focus, and it may also affect their productivity“. In fact, cognitive function test were 61%-101% higher in buildings with higher ventilation than in conventional buildings. Clearly, indoor air quality in schools could have a significant impact on students’ cognitive function, and their ability to learn. Not much of a stretch to extrapolate this conclusion! 

The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly demonstrated the urgency of ensuring good ventilation and indoor air quality. Joseph Allen, Associate Professor of Exposure Assessment Science and senior author on the Harvard study mentioned above, noted that “the value proposition of these strategies extends to cognitive function and productivity of workers, making healthy buildings foundational to public health and business strategy moving forward.”

How Do We Ensure Excellent School Conditions in Ontario? 

If we accept that school conditions matter, then we must take the following steps:

1. Develop and implement a Standard of Good Repair for Ontario’s publicly funded schools, including transparent metrics for school buildings, portables and schoolyards. These standards and associated metrics would include and address:

    • The $16.8-billion of disrepair in school buildings
    • A program to assess current repair backlogs in portables and schoolyards
    • Air quality and ventilation
    • Classroom temperatures
    • Accessibility
    • Environmental efficiency & durability
    • Job site safety for school construction projects and maintenance work
    • Drinking water
    • Asbestos
    • Cleanliness
    • Classroom space
    • Vermin, mold
    • Fire and electrical code

2. Provide Ontario’s publicly funded schools with adequate, stable, equitable funding that ensures these standards are met; and publicly demonstrate positive outcomes by collecting and releasing associated metrics at regular intervals.

Fix Our Schools provided these recommendations to the Ministry of Education as part of its 2022-23 Education Funding consultation process, highlighting that, at a minimum, an additional $1.6-B/year is required (on top of the current $1.4-B/year provincial funding for school repair and renewal) to start to turn the tide on the ever-growing backlog of disrepair in Ontario’s schools. This level of increased funding is a recommendation that we have been making to since 2017 and, with each year that successive governments have failed to heed this call to action, the repair backlog in Ontario’s schools has grown.

In fact, the repair backlog in Ontario’s schools has grown from $15.9-B in November, 2017 (the last time that full disrepair data was released by the provincial government) to $16.8-B. And, as we’ve noted previously, this $16.8-B number does not even begin to include many important aspects of school infrastructure.

Fix Our Schools has always been open to exploring all ideas for funding solutions that could result in safe, healthy, well-maintained schools. We would welcome further exploration of the following ideas as well:

  1. Separating the assets we happen to call “public schools ” today (but that could become community hubs serving seniors in two decades time) from the education that is delivered in these buildings could be a powerful shift that could unlock new revenue streams. Education is engrained in the Canadian constitution as a provincial responsibility so when we include school infrastructure as part of “education”, our provincial governments in Canada are then solely responsible for funding both public education and public school infrastructure (school buildings, portables and schoolyards). However, if we delineate school infrastructure from education, then municipal, provincial, and federal governments could (and should!) contribute to funding safe, healthy, well-maintained school infrastructure.  
  2. Similarly, if the capital assets we call schools were considered to be separate and distinct from the education delivered in schools, perhaps school infrastructure would be better managed by an entity with power over the funding and policies, and accountability over the outcomes. As economist Hugh Mackenzie has  noted, “The (Provincial) government is fully responsible for the level of funding provided but local school boards bear the consequences and are accountable for the results. Despite the government’s complete control over funding, there is no provincial accountability mechanism for the performance of and funding for the system as a whole.” As Fix Our Schools has noted time and again, Ontario’s school boards are at the mercy of the provincial funding model, and the provincial government of the day blames school boards for substandard school conditions, even though the provincial funding to maintain, repair and build schools has been chronically and grossly inadequate. This is the dynamic that has led to a large and growing repair backlog in Ontario’s public schools that now sits at a gob-smacking $16.8-billion, and therefore is a dynamic that must be examined and changed. School infrastructure could, perhaps, become the responsibility of the provincial government rather than the responsibility of school boards. Or, school boards could, perhaps, be given back the power of taxation. Or, perhaps if Municipalities and the Federal government were also involved in the funding of maintenance, repair and building of school infrastructure, there are other models to be considered.
  3. The Toronto District School Board and its subsidiary the Toronto Lands Corporation (TLC) have proposed selling off non-instructional sites to fix the TDSB’s crumbling schools, as outlined in the November 26 CBC article by Angelina King entitled, “The TDSB is ‘land rich and cash poor’ – could $1-B in real estate help fix crumbling schools?“. This is a proposed solution that would demand many changes to provincial policies and approaches to actually be realized, and one that would only assist the TDSB, which is one of 72 school boards in the province, all of which face large and growing repair backlogs. However, the concept proposed by the TDSB and TLC is an interesting one that warrants examination and discussion. In essence, it is a question of how society can best use and derive value from public buildings over time, and changing demographics.

As a parent-led campaign, we certainly do not have all the policy answers. However, we do know, unequivocally, that the current provincial funding model and approach to policies that inform school conditions is one that is broken. New solutions are needed now, and we need a provincial government that listens, works with stakeholders, and has a culture of learning.

All Parties Must Prioritize Publicly Funded Schools and Education

November 22, 2021

With a provincial election approaching in June, 2022, Fix Our Schools continues to be a non-partisan, parent-led, Ontario-wide campaign working to ensure that:

1.Every publicly funded school in Ontario is safe, well-maintained, healthy and provides an environment conducive to learning and working; a goal that has taken on increased significance during the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. A Standard of Good Repair for Ontario’s publicly funded schools is developed and implemented, which would include transparent metrics for school buildings, portables and schoolyards. These standards and associated metrics must include and address:

    • The $16.8-billion of disrepair in school buildings
    • A program to assess current repair backlogs in portables and schoolyards
    • Air quality and ventilation
    • Classroom temperatures
    • Accessibility
    • Environmental efficiency & durability
    • Job site safety for school construction projects and maintenance work
    • Drinking water
    • Asbestos
    • Cleanliness
    • Classroom space
    • Vermin, mold
    • Fire and electrical code

3. Publicly funded schools receive adequate, stable, equitable provincial funding that enables school boards to meet these provincial standards and publicly demonstrate positive outcomes by collecting and releasing associated metrics at regular intervals.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how critical school buildings and education are to Ontario’s children, their families, and our economy. With this in mind, we provided this input to the Ministry of Education as part of its 2022-23 Education Funding consultation process. Our sincere hope is that the Ford government will accept and act upon our feedback.

In the coming months, we will work to ensure that all political parties in this province prioritize safe, healthy, well-maintained school buildings, portables and schoolyards, and reflect this prioritization by including the following in their education platforms:

  • A Standard of Good Repair and associated metrics for school buildings, portables and schoolyards
  • Adequate, stable, and equitable provincial funding to achieve these standards and to collect and release the associated metrics publicly at regular intervals

Standards, Metrics, and Funding – Oh My!

November 9, 2021

Provincial Funding: What School Boards Rely Upon to Maintain School Infrastructure

Sadly, in the Fall Economic Statement from the Ford government this past week, we learned that base funding for education was being cut by $460-million. Minister Lecce defended his government’s actions, stating that “if you account for everything all other ministries are spending to help schools, the kids and teachers are still ahead.” 

Perhaps this provincial funding cut is a matter of reporting. Perhaps not. The Ford government seems to intentionally create confusion when it releases numbers and data,  and it consistently avoids transparency. Therefore, comparing year over year numbers and data is increasingly challenging, if not downright impossible. Thus, Fix Our Schools is not overly interested in debating the minutiae of this cut to education funding. We are, however, extremely interested in rebutting Minister Lecce’s statement and belief that “if you account for everything all other ministries are spending to help schools, the kids and teachers are still ahead”.

We believe that if the Ford government were to actually engage with education stakeholders, they would learn that the kids and teachers are absolutely not “ahead” by any measure these days. In fact, should our provincial government pursue authentic engagement with its stakeholders, they may even hear that this flippant and vague explanation of a cut to education funding is offensive, and that Ontario students, teachers, and education workers are struggling to catch up from the ongoing pandemic challenges. In the lead-up to a provincial election, Minister Lecce’s disregard and casual dismissal of the real needs of public schools and education is frustrating and, indeed, disturbing.

Fix Our Schools also believes that a complete rethink of provincial funding for schools and education is imperative, and that any new funding approach to school infrastructure must begin with a commitment to providing the funding actually needed to achieve the goals and outcomes we envision for school infrastructure. Additionally, any responsible funding model would also include:

  • Standards of good repair that include not only the outstanding repairs currently collected, but also items such as: portables; ventilation and indoor air quality; drinking water quality; asbestos remediation; accessibility; schoolyards, classroom temperatures; and cleanliness.
  • Metrics that must be collected at given time intervals and compared against the set standards in order to confirm that investments and funding provided are achieving the desired outcomes

Standards & Metrics: During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Moving Forward

Without a set of standards in place for school infrastructure, no metrics are being collected and assessed to confirm that desired outcomes are being achieved. Without a set of standards there is no way to determine if an adequate level of funding is being provided to reasonably be able to achieve these outcomes. In the long-term, we know that school conditions matter. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, good school conditions can reduce absenteeism, improve test scores, and improve teacher retention. It is clear that in the long-term, Ontario absolutely needs a comprehensive set of standards for school infrastructure; and metrics in place to ensure those standards are being met and properly funded. Is this the government to do that?

In the short-term, as we move through this tenuous time towards the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, let’s consider standards and metrics as they relate to ventilation and indoor air quality (IAQ).  Ontario’s science table believes that provincial case counts will remain stable, even as social contacts increase, so long as public health measures such as masking, vaccine certificates, ventilation/filtration and symptom screening remain in place.

While the Ford government has provided funding for school boards to “improve  ventilation”, they have not instituted any standards for what IAQ is required to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and to improve health outcomes for students, teachers, and education workers during this pandemic. Furthermore, the Ford government has not provided any direction or funding to school boards to collect metrics on ventilation and IAQ, so we have no sense of whether the investments that school boards have made in ventilation improvements have yielded desired outcomes. This is simply fiscally irresponsible.

In the short-term, standards, metrics and ongoing funding are urgently needed for ventilation and indoor air quality in Ontario’s schools. And, in the longer-term, standards for all facets of school infrastructure, metrics to assess these standards, and adequate, stable provincial funding to ensure meeting these standards is possible are all absolute imperatives for Ontario’s schools.

September 30 is National Day for Truth & Reconciliation

September 27, 2021

September 30 marks a new federal statutory holiday in our country – National Day for Truth & Reconciliation. The day honours the lost children and survivors of residential schools and their families and communities. It recognizes that public commemoration of the tragic and painful history and ongoing impacts of residential schools is a vital component of the reconciliation process.

Fix Our Schools wanted to mark this day with some reflection on First Nations schools across our country.

First Nations Schools on Indigenous Reserves Prior to COVID-19

While Ontario’s publicly funded schools rely upon provincial funding, the federal government is responsible for First Nations schools on reserves. Ontario’s publicly funded school buildings entered the COVID-19 pandemic with a $16.3-billion repair backlog and, despite “historic” levels of provincial funding, this repair backlog increased to $16.8-billion by June, 2021. While this number is staggering, it notably does not even include First Nations schools, portables, accessibility retrofits, water quality, air quality, or asbestos abatement. There is, however, significant disrepair as well as a lack of clean water and sanitation in many schools on First Nations reserves. There is also an absence of schools within a reasonable distance for many First Nations students, particularly high schools.

According to the Assembly of First Nations – First Nations Education Infrastructure Capital Needs Assessment, 2020, there are 526 First Nations schools across Canada, and $2.14 billion is required for new school construction and additions, with 28% (or 140) schools being overcrowded. Further to this, 46 of the 526 First Nations schools required immediate replacement based on the school age or poor condition.

The COVID-19 Pandemic Expanded Inequities In Education and Schools

Disrepair, lack of clean water and sanitation, absence of local schools, and overcrowding were issues that negatively impacted Indigenous students even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. And, as the Ontario COVID-19 Science Table noted in its July 2021 briefing, “for rural, remote, and Indigenous communities, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented additional distinctive and substantial challenges for education delivery which has expanded inequities”. This science briefing highlighted specific issues with school infrastructure on reserves:

  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.

 

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

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 TRC 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.

September 30 is Canada’s first National Day for Truth & Reconciliation

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.

On September 30, we encourage you to mark Canada’s first National Day for Truth & Reconciliation. Consider taking time to:

  • Wear orange. Orange Shirt Day, an Indigenous-led grassroots commemorative day that honours the children who survived Indian Residential Schools and remembers those who did not, also takes place on September 30. Wearing orange on September 30 raises awareness of the very tragic legacy of residential schools, and honours the thousands of Survivors.
  • Write your newly elected (or re-elected) local MP and Prime Minister Trudeau to prioritize education and schools for all Indigenous Peoples in Ontario, and across the country.
  • Tune in to CBC coverage of National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. CBC will be sharing First Nations, Métis and Inuit perspectives and experiences from across the country. For the entire day, these stories will be broadcast across CBC TV, CBC News Network, CBC.ca, CBC Kids, CBC Radio One and CBC Music, including a commercial-free primetime broadcast special, National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
  • “See us, hear us, and to believe us”. Geraldine Shingoose, a residential school survivor – or warrior as she prefers to be called – said in this Global News piece , “I ask Canada to see us, to hear us and to believe us,” echoing the sentiments of Murray Sinclair, who served as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Shingoose suggests Canadians take a moment of silence at 2:15 p.m. – referring to the number of graves found in Kamloops, and adds that small gestures such as displaying an orange shirt in your window can have a powerful impact on survivors.

Largest School Board in the Country Takes a Step in the Right Direction

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is Canada’s largest school board and, as per the following media release from September 22, 2021, has taken a step in the right direction.

“The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) Urban Indigenous Education Centre (UIEC), with guidance from the Elders Council, will open the Boyne Natural Science School as an Indigenous Land-Based Learning site.Trustees unanimously supported the initiative during this evening’s Regular Board Meeting.

This site is located on 308.5 acres of the Niagara Escarpment, adjacent to the Bruce Trail and the Boyne River Provincial Park. Its reopening supports the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action and supports Indigenous Education on The Land for all students, staff and Indigenous communities

The Indigenous Land-Based Learning site, which will have one to two classes on location at a time will feature programming that focuses on holistic Indigenous health and well-being (physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual) in support of Indigenous student success. It will also include professional learning, community engagement, partnerships, curriculum resource development and innovation, research and development, and reconciliation through Indigenous perspectives.

To support the expansion of Land-Based Learning through Indigenous ways of knowing and being, UIEC staff will create resources to support all curriculum areas based on Indigenous Pedagogies; including, but not limited to Indigenous cultures and traditions, Indigenous language revitalization, archery, canoe/kayak building, hiking, maple syrup programming, mapping and orienteering, medicine harvesting and walks, mountain biking and snow shoeing.

In the future, the TDSB anticipates the site can be restored to support larger groups for day and overnight programming when the pandemic allows.”

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.

What does Hand Hygiene in School Look Like in Ontario?

February 16, 2021

With many Ontario children back to in-class learning, the timing seems appropriate for considering hand hygiene in our schools. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “handwashing with soap and water has been considered a measure of personal hygiene for centuries”. Yet, if we take a look at what hand hygiene looks like in Ontario schools, we may be slightly appalled.

This video of how handwashing must be done one hand at a time at one Ontario school is a reminder that there is much work to be done in Ontario schools to ensure they are safe and healthy environments for students and staff – not only during this pandemic but for the long-term.


The provincial funding provided to school boards for both operating and capital expenses has been inadequate for so many years, that it seems as though soap in schools has become a luxury item; sinks in classrooms have been built to a quality level that they cannot even accommodate regular hand-washing in the midst of a global pandemic (which begs the question, what exactly were they designed to accommodate?);

and countless school washrooms across the province have been allowed to deteriorate to a point where students and staff are uncomfortable using them even for urgent needs, let alone using them for handwashing. In fact, back in 2017, we wrote this blog about a group of grade 5 students who were advocating for better washrooms in their school. Heartwarming to see this kind of activism in young people, and at the same time, heartbreaking that this type of activism would even be necessary, given that Ontario prides itself on having a “world-class education system”.  

https://twitter.com/KellyLMNOP/status/1299350949106978817

Chronic provincial underfunding of schools and education has, indeed, caught up to us. Amidst a pandemic, handwashing is an important hygiene practice in schools and, certainly, as we move past this pandemic, hand hygiene in schools will continue to be important to ensuring healthy students and staff amidst more “normal” times to prevent the spread of colds and flus. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has gone so far as to call for investments in things like touch-free faucets, such as the ones we see in local community centers, and ON Route rest stops along the 401 and 400 highways. Fix Our Schools wholeheartedly agrees with this call to action and urges our provincial government to invest in our schools to ensure they are healthy, safe, well-maintained buildings for students today…and for years to come. 

Transparency: A Building Block of Effectiveness and Efficiency

February 9, 2021

Transparency is generally accepted as an important aspect of any democratic government:

Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government. Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset.        – Barack Obama, Former US President

In Ontario, the Ford government has been anything but transparent since taking office. For example, Fix Our Schools has made regular calls for the Ford government to follow the lead of the previous government in updating and sharing disrepair data for Ontario’s schools each year. The Ford government has consistently ignored our calls for transparency into this information, which is collected using taxpayer dollars, and is necessary for citizens to assess success in improving the state of local schools, and to advocate locally for urgent repair items. Instead, we continue to rely on the detailed school disrepair data that was last published by the previous Liberal government in Fall 2017 to understand whether Ontario’s publicly funded schools are healthy, safe, and well-maintained buildings. Thanks to the persistence of NDP Education Critic Marit Stiles, we’ve also been able to glean that overall school disrepair has increased from $15.9-billion in Fall 2017 to $16.3-billion in Fall 2019. This is not transparency. This level of secrecy will not lead to efficient, effective solutions to fix Ontario’s schools. 

This culture of opacity has continued throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and we’ve seen the Ford government routinely ignore calls for transparency. In November, even some of Ford’s key advisors were calling for more transparency about the details and rationale of its pandemic response. Dr. Charles Gardner, a member of Ford’s public health measures table, urged Premier Ford to provide more information to the public, stating, “I believe when people have good information they understand things better, and they’re more likely to abide by restrictions.” However, these calls for increased transparency again went unheeded.

More recently, and specific to the education sector, students, teachers, parents, school boards, and the general public have sought transparency on how this government is making decisions about when to close schools due to COVID-19 and when to allow schools to open amidst the ongoing pandemic. On Monday, Feb. 1, 2021, David Williams, the province’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, was quoted in a Globe & Mail article entitled, “Ontario officials vague on school reopening criteria” as saying that there was “not an exact number, per se” when asked about the metrics being considered in reopening schools. “We would like them all down, ideally quite low,” he added. This Toronto Star opinion piece responded clearly to this lack of transparency or use of any clear metrics –  “the government hasn’t even bothered to provide the specific metrics it’s using to determine when schools can reopen.” The title of the article published by School Magazine on February 2 says it all: “Return to school: A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma cloaked in uncertainty” This is not transparency. 

Also amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen a tremendous lack of detail and transparency, and perhaps even a lack of truth, into the details of what is being funded to keep students, teachers, and education workers safe in schools. It is one thing for a government to cite what needs to be done but if they are not providing the required money to actually fund what needs to be done, then these are empty action plans that will not result in anything to benefit students, teachers, and education workers.

For example, during the week of Feb. 1, Minister Lecce proudly announced that “Ontario would provide additional funding to keep schools safe“, without clarifying that the $381-million being announced had already been announced with fanfare back in August. This $381-million was simply the second allotment of federal funding provided to Ontario schools. In the same week, Minister Lecce also proudly announced that 1400 custodians had been hired. However, the union representing these workers cannot confirm or substantiate this claim and has actually submitted a Freedom of Information request to the government to seek clarity. This is not transparency. 

Minister Lecce also claimed that more teachers have been hired and yet, the general public is again left relying upon Freedom of Information requests to substantiate these claims.

This is not transparency.

Safe, Healthy, Well-Maintained Schools – a Non-Partisan Issue

February 2, 2021

Ever since the Fix Our Schools campaign began in 2014, we have operated in a non-partisan manner, recognizing that the goal of safe, healthy, well-maintained schools is a non-partisan issue. Whether we spoke to a 78-year old white man who lived in rural Ontario and had always voted conservative, or whether we spoke to a 23-year old Black woman who lived in downtown Toronto and voted NDP, the consistent and unanimous response to stories of disrepair in schools, or substandard learning conditions was simple:

We need to fix our schools

To fix our schools requires money and, in Ontario, the only money that can be used to fix schools comes from our provincial government.

Based on recent reports, we know that Premier Ford’s government is sitting on over $6-billion of unspent federal pandemic funding, so our provincial government has unallocated money literally sitting in its coffers. Based on recent reports, we also know that Premier Ford’s government ignored 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.  

These are the facts.

So, why is our provincial government politicizing the issue of safe, healthy, well-maintained schools in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic? Is it political to want well-ventilated classrooms? Is it political to want children and adults in schools to be able to readily wash their hands? Is it political to want classrooms where students can readily practice the physical distancing that is a tenet of every single COVID public health message?

The NDP, Liberal, and Green parties all agree on what needs to be done for children and adults to be safe in schools: low community spread, proper ventilation in classrooms, quality PPE, room to practice physical distancing, adequate nurses and custodians, and testing in schools. It is the 11th month of the pandemic, and we still await these measures. These MPP’s represent 57.76% of Ontarians. Why doesn’t Premier Ford listen to hundreds of medical experts, all of the other parties, and a good portion of voters? 

What are we to make of a government using distractions to avoid spending money for the safety of its citizens? The Ford government could choose to listen to students, parents, teachers, health professionals, and its own Ministry staff, but instead, saves the desperately needed funds for some unspecified future date.

Do you agree with Fix Our Schools that the goal of safe, healthy, well-maintained schools, especially in the midst of a pandemic, is a non-partisan one? If this is a non-partisan goal, and there is money in the bank, then what on earth is stopping the Ford government from spending money to get Ontario’s students back in classrooms safely? 

Is Premier Ford “Doing the Best He Can” Amidst Challenging Circumstances?

January 19, 2021

Fix Our Schools has been hearing on social media some version of the following question over the past few weeks:

“What do you expect Premier Ford to do? I think he’s doing the best he can in this difficult situation.”

So we thought now was as good a time as any to give a full and complete response to that question …

Please keep in mind that Fix Our Schools’ focus is on ensuring schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working, so what we expect of the Ford government focuses only on that aspect of education, leaving far more calls to action unwritten here. 

Our Pre-Pandemic Expectations of Premier Ford:

To answer the question fully, it seemed necessary to go back to the beginning. Since the Ford government took power in June 2018, Fix Our Schools has taken advantage of the annual budget consultation process to submit our expectations on what the Ford government should do to ensure Ontario’s schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working. Some expectations that we have consistently outlined in these submissions include:

  • Developing a standard of good repair for Ontario’s schools
  • Providing adequate, stable funding to eliminate the $16.3-billion of disrepair in Ontario’s schools
  • Resuming transparency into the disrepair in Ontario’s schools

We made these recommendations in January 2019 and submitted these recommendations in January 2020, and in each of these years also made presentations to the Committee of Economic Affairs and Finance as part of the budget consultation process.

Since 2018, our unwritten expectation of Premier Ford was that he would cultivate a government culture that authentically engaged with, actively listened to, and humbly learned from key stakeholders, in order to develop the best decisions and policy in the face of complex challenges. Our experience has, in fact, been quite the opposite. In stark contrast to the Liberal government who held power before Ford took over, and also in stark contrast to the PC Education Critic and Leader at Queen’s Park at that time, the Ford government has chosen not to actively engage with, listen to, or learn from stakeholders in any meaningful way. Prior to Ford becoming Premier, Fix Our Schools had true working relationships with the NDP Education Critic and Leader, the PC Education Critic and Leader, the Minister of Education, their political staff and the Ontario public servants in that Ministry, and, most notably, as a parent-led, non-partisan, Ontario-wide campaign, we had direct contact and many productive meetings with senior-level policy advisors within the Premiers’ Office. Those working relationships lead to some excellent progress, including significant increases in provincial funding for school repairs increase from $150-M/year to $1.4-B/year and transparency into the disrepair data in schools. Our experience with the Ford administration is that the culture established there is not one of learning or growth, so they seem destined to fall short when leading amidst the extreme complexity and pressure of a global pandemic.

As our input to the 2021/22 provincial budget, Fix Our Schools sent this submission to the Ministry of Education, and continues to call for stable, adequate, equitable funding for schools; a standard of good repair for all Ontario schools, including First Nations schools (which are funded with federal money) and portables. In this funding submission, we also included funding recommendations for the current pandemic environment, and looked ahead to 2025, when all public buildings are meant to be fully accessible for people with disabilities, and made recommendations to this government to provide funding to school boards to address accessibility within their buildings.

Our Expectations of Premier Ford Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic:

On June 11, 2020, Fix Our Schools sent these expectations to the Ministry of Education, in response to its request for public input to Ontario’s plan to reopen schools. Days later, we learned that an advisory group led by The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) had been working closely with the Ministry of Education.  SickKids issued its initial recommendations for safe school reopenings in the document, COVID-19: Recommendations for School Reopening (pdf), highlighting the need for:

  • the ability for children to maintain 2M distance from one another in classrooms
  • proper ventilation in classrooms
  • proper hand-washing facilities for all students

Given Fix Our Schools initial recommendations, and SickKids initial and subsequent recommendations, Fix Our Schools would have expected Premier Ford to have done the following, all of which are within his governments’ power: 

  • Released new emergency repairs funding to school boards so that they could have taken advantage of the fact that school buildings were empty for weeks and months at a time, and could have conducted outstanding repairs in these buildings more safely and more efficiently. 
  • Funded a return to school plan that would have allowed for sufficient space for students to maintain the recommended 2 m distance from others, like many other countries
  • Responded quickly to the June 17 Sick Kids report calling for proper ventilation in all classrooms, by immediately releasing funding to school boards to have been able to address ventilation issues, rather than waiting to release only $50-M in late August – weeks before schools were opening.
  • Provided funding required to ensure all Ontario students could have easy access to proper hand-washing in schools.
  • Advocated for Ontario’s First Nations schools, even though these are federally funded
  • Provided funding to replenish the technology that, understandably, was taken from schools back in the Spring to ensure all students had resources to participate in at-home learning, accommodate on-line learning. As it stands now, most schools have a dearth of technology available for in-school learning.
  • Developed a provincial outdoor education plan, acknowledging that being outdoors offers the most protection against COVID-19 transmission.
  • Consulted with educators and other education stakeholders to understand how government policies would actually unfold in real classrooms, in real schools, rather than relying on teachers, principals and education workers to work miracles.
  • Hired additional caretakers.

We, at Fix Our Schools, hope that this provides some insight into all that could have been done by Premier Ford since taking office in June 2018 to lead us to a much better place than we find ourselves in today. This January 7, 2021 Ottawa Citizen article provides some additional recommendations on ways Premier Ford and his government could make schools safer.