Tag Archives: Funding

Individual vs. Collective Investment in Schools and Education: What is Needed Now from the Ford Government?

January 12, 2021

Since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered Ontario’s schools in mid-March 2020, the Ford government has offered financial support to individual families to offset the costs of supporting their children’s learning amidst the pandemic.

  • Between April 6 and August 31, 2020, families could apply for a program called “Support for Families”, which would provide a one-time payment, per child, of $200 for children aged 0 to 12 and $250 for children or youth aged 0 to 21 with special needs. As per the Ministry of Education website, “this funding was offered to help parents with the costs of work books, educational apps, educational subscription services, movies and other tools to support learning at home”
  • On November 5, the Ford government released its annual budget, and announced it would extend an additional one-time payment to families of $200 for children aged 0 to 12 and $250 for children or youth aged 0 to 21 with special needs. “This funding was offered to help families access workbooks, school supplies, and technology to help their child’s learning this year”. The initial deadline to apply through the Get Support for Learners government webpage was originally January 15, 2021 but this deadline has been extended to February 8, 2021.

According to the November 5, 2020 CTV News report entitled, “Ontario parents will get another $200 payout to help with education costs”, the Ford government will spend $380-million on the second round of payments, on top of the $378-million for the first batch of payments. Rod Phillips, Finance Minister for the Ford government at the time, said this was “money well spent.”

On December 22, the Ford government announced that it would extend the same $200/student payment for students aged 13-through until Grade 12. Using 2016 Census Data for Ontario, Fix Our Schools estimates approximately 1-million students fall in this age range, meaning an estimated additional $200-million of government spending on this benefit. The application process for families to apply through the Get Support for Learners government webpage for children aged 13-18 opens January 11, 2021 and closes February 8, 2021.

The direct payments listed above are available to families of students who attend public schools, private schools, First Nations operated or federally operated schools, or are homeschooled. In total, they could equate to up to $958-million ($380-million + $378-million + $200-million) in government support directly to families for education amidst the COVID -pandemic.

Some would approve of the approach that the Ford government has used here – getting money directly into the hands of parents and guardians as quickly as possible, with as little red tape as possible. And there are certainly economic arguments for taking this approach.

However, others would vehemently disapprove of this approach, citing equity concerns such as:

  • Will the families who need support the most even apply to receive this payment due to awareness, access to technology, and time to apply?
  • Will the direct payment amount provided yield any real benefit for the education of children in this most challenging of times, when compared to benefits that may be yielded if this $958-million of provincial funding had been invested collectively in schools and education?

The Fix Our Schools campaign has always focused on ensuring that publicly funded schools in Ontario are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning. The only mechanism within the current provincial funding formula to achieve this goal is for our provincial government to invest collectively in Ontario’s 5,000 schools. So why on earth, when we all knew back in the spring that ventilation in classrooms was key to safety, did the Ford government only invest $50-million in improving school ventilation?

We also question why the Ford government has done nothing to invest in ensuring that elementary students have the space in classrooms required to properly physical distance, knowing early on in the pandemic that this is a key success factor? Furthermore, we question why the Ford government has only invested $15-M collectively in technology for schools amidst this pandemic? Minister Lecce made an announcement on Saturday, January 9th, and shockingly, to quote NDP Education critic Marit Stiles and NDP Childcare critic Doly Begum:

“It’s desperately frustrating for parents that Stephen Lecce got in front of the cameras, and didn’t announce a single measure to make schools safe to re-open. This government doesn’t want to invest in schools, and that’s putting our kids’ health and their education at risk.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the fact that school infrastructure in this province has been chronically and grossly underfunded by successive provincial governments (and federal governments in the case of First Nations schools). Prior to the pandemic, there was $16.3-billion of disrepair in Ontario’s publicly funded buildings. A society cannot ignore infrastructure for decades and then expect that infrastructure to be resilient and safe amidst a pandemic. Knowing that the only source of funding for school infrastructure is government funding, Fix Our Schools believes that more collective investment by the Ford government is desperately needed – to address ventilation issues in classrooms, to ensure students have enough space in classrooms to properly distance, to buy the technology that school boards need to ensure all students have what they require to learn to name but a few collective investments. If you share our concerns and want the Ford government to take immediate steps to make the investments required to get all Ontario students back to in-class learning in schools, then please take one minute to send this letter to Premier Ford and your local MPP.

However, we also acknowledge that many families may benefit greatly from the direct payments from the Ford government, so if your family will benefit from the direct payments being offered by the Ford government to help with student learning, please ensure you apply before February 8, 2021 by visiting the Get Support for Learners government webpage. If your family circumstances are such that this direct government payment is not really needed, perhaps consider applying for it, regardless, and then donating the money? An idea to consider. 

Fix Our Schools shares the frustration of opposition parties with the Ford government’s lack of investment and lack of action to date to ensure students could be safe to learn in-person, clearly the best option for all students.

Fix Our Schools feels deep frustration on behalf of the children, teachers, principals, education workers, families, and school boards who have been and continue to be subject to the half-measures and lack of investment and action by our provincial government. Back in late August, Premier Ford said, “We’re really relying on school boards. I just told them I have all the confidence in the world that they’re going to be able to get through this and make sure that the students and the staff are in a very safe environment”. Premier Ford – you cannot continue to underfund schools and education, and then pass the buck to others to work miracles. Fix Our Schools believes that additional collective investment in schools and education is the only way forward, even though this investment would be coming much later than it ought to have been delivered. What do you think?

Who is Ontario’s Auditor-General and Why Do We Care?

December 1, 2020

Ontario’s Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk and her office made the news this week after the release of a scathing report on our provincial government’s COVID-19 preparedness and management thus far.

So who is Ontario’s Auditor-General? What is the Auditor-General office’s purpose and role? Why is it that sometimes Premier Ford loves what the Auditor-General Office says and sometimes he does not? As per their website, the Office of the Auditor-General of Ontario:

  • Is an independent, non-partisan Office of the Legislative Assembly that serves both Members of Provincial Parliament and the people of Ontario.
  • Plays an important role in holding provincial public-sector and broader-public-sector organizations accountable for financial responsibility, well-managed programs, and transparency in public reporting.
  • Audits Crown corporations and organizations in the broader public sector that receive provincial funding, such as hospitals and long-term-care homes, universities and colleges, and school boards.

Since our inception in 2014, the Fix Our Schools campaign has often cited Auditor-General reports that examined school infrastructure.

The Auditor-General’s December 2015 report was particularly informative to our campaign, as it clearly identified that:

Fix Our Schools was able to leverage this 2015 Auditor-General report to convince the provincial government to:

Since the 2015 Ontario Auditor-General’s report, the only other time that Ontario’s public school infrastructure has been considered was in 2018, when her office looked into Ministry of Education funding, in general. The 2018 report noted that when it comes to funding education in Ontario, the Ministry of Education “does not allocate funding based on actual needs”.

Here we are now in December 2020, five years from when the Ontario Auditor-General first delved into school infrastructure and identified many necessary steps to ensure that Ontario’s students attend schools that are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings. What do we know today?

  • Despite yearly provincial funding of $1.4-B/year for school repair and renewal, the overall repair backlog in Ontario’s schools has grown year over year since 2015, and is now at least $16.3-B.
  • The $16.3-B of disrepair identified in Ontario’s school buildings does not include any disrepair in portables.
  • The Ford government refuses to provide transparency into this disrepair because it has not yet updated and released school disrepair and FCI data since taking office in 2018.
  • There is still no standard of good repair for Ontario’s schools so we don’t even know what “success” looks like for these critical buildings.
  • The criticality of school buildings has become increasingly evident, as we have realized that we cannot chronically and grossly underfund infrastructure, and then realistically count on it to keep people safe in the midst of a global pandemic.

Fix Our Schools has no idea when the Ontario Auditor-General might delve into Ontario’s public school infrastructure again. However, we urge her office to do so very soon and to properly serve the people of Ontario – especially the 2-million children and thousands of educators and education workers who spend their days in school buildings – we urge her office to hold the provincial government to account for the ongoing failure to fix Ontario’s schools.

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.

$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.

 

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?

Fix Our Schools Calls Upon Province to Expedite Framework and Commit Funding

June 1, 2020

On Monday, June 1, Fix Our Schools issued the following media release on June 1, 2020:

Province must expedite framework and commit adequate funding for school re-opening in September

Today, Fix Our Schools is asking the province to expedite delivery of the framework for re-opening Ontario’s schools, and commit to adequate funding, so that school boards can properly plan for students to safely, effectively return to schools in September.

Local school boards, with guidance from local public health officials, will ultimately be charged with re-opening Ontario’s schools for September. They need to start planning as soon as possible, and they need the certainty of adequate provincial funding – something that has been lacking for decades. However, the COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated that, with political will, previously unimaginable public resources can be found and allocated.

Fix Our Schools is specifically calling on the Province to:

  • Move the deadline to deliver the framework for re-opening schools from the end of June to June 12.
  • Commit to providing the necessary funding for school boards to be able to reasonably plan and implement a safe, effective re-opening of schools in September.
  • Work with local school boards and public health officials to provide weekly updates to the public on the school re-opening planning/implementation process.

Now is the time for political will to be applied to our publicly funded schools and education system. Ontario’s 2-million students need to know that the adults in charge are committed to their education, their mental health, and their development. Our economy also demands a prioritization of public education and schools. The accountability and transparency of a designated weekly progress communication on the safe re-opening of schools in September would demonstrate this commitment – and help students, families, and our economy.

“Parents with students in Ontario’s public education system have come to realize and value all that school provides for our children – not only learning but also childcare, routine, social interaction, a sense of community and purpose, opportunities for growth, maturity and development. For parents and students, a plan to safely return to school in September is of paramount importance and must be a priority. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that with political will – almost anything is possible. We want to see the political will exerted to make a safe return to school possible for Ontario’s students this coming September.

– Krista Wylie, Fix Our Schools Co-founder

The fact is that we have been living with a chronically underfunded public education system. Some schools do without a full-time custodian, and our system’s capital repair backlog – from leaky roofs to no hot water or soap in bathrooms to lead pipes – has ballooned to $16.3-billion over the past two decades. Will the provincial government provide school boards with the resources to meet the challenges created by this pandemic? Frankly, failing to come through with the funding to make this all happen would be to compound the impact COVID-19’s shutdown has had on children throughout this province.

– Marit Stiles, NDP Education Critic

“We applaud the province on having met with many smaller working tables that are looking at individual issues. But coherence is key here. Ontario’s students and educators need to know that there is an overall, comprehensive plan, based on evidence, expertise and experience. One-off meetings and small working tables will not accomplish that.” 

– Annie Kidder, People for Education’s Executive Director.

“Our schools are a learning environment for 2-million students, and a workplace for almost 200,000 teachers and education workers. The re-opening of schools in a safe and effective way is essential for the development and mental health of our children, our economy, and our well-being as a province”

– Stephen Lecce, Minister of Education

Washrooms

February 8, 2016

Northern 4 We first wrote about school washrooms in June 2015 when we asked the question, “Would you go to the washroom if it looked like this?”

This photo was taken at a public high school in a washroom. You’ll note the broken window. Looks like nothing has changed in the last six months so our question remains, “Would you go to the washroom if it looked like this?”.

The Province’s math doesn’t add up for funding TDSB repairs

February 10, 2015

On average, the sale of a TDSB school will net the TDSB $10 million (as per TDSB staff).

So if the TDSB were to immediately sell all 130 schools operating at below 65%, it would net a total of $1.3-billion in revenue. This money could, theoretically, be used to address repairs and maintenance at TDSB schools and reduce the total backlog to approximately $1.7-billion.

However, money from selling schools actually goes to Provincial coffers, and the Province determines how it actually gets spent. At the moment, the Province has issued no guarantees that money raised by the TDSB selling off schools will be used to address the TDSB’s backlog of repairs and maintenance! 

But wait – we digress from the mathematics at hand. Let’s factor in that the TDSB wouldn’t have to repair any of the 130 schools it sells so we could subtract the repairs backlog from those 130 schools from the total backlog. Even though there would also be some savings in operating expenses from the 130 sold schools, it seems prudent to allocate those saved operating funds to student programs and not repairs/maintenance so we won’t worry about those savings in this mathematical exercise.

If we take the total $3-billion backlog and divide it by 588 TDSB schools, each TDSB school has an average of $5.1-million outstanding repairs. So, if we assume that the 130 schools being sold in this fictitious example each have a repair backlog of $5.1-million, then the TDSB could effectively eliminate another $663-million from its total backlog of repairs and maintenance to arrive at a new total backlog of outstanding repairs and maintenance of $1.04-billion.

The Province’s math doesn’t begin to add up to the TDSB being able to address its outstanding repairs and maintenance by selling off “empty” schools – even if it immediately sells off every single school currently operating below 65% and even if the Province agrees to allocate funds received from these sales to the TDSB repairs/maintenance backlog.

Keep in mind that this fictitious math problem also doesn’t take into account the following facts:

  • The process for selling off schools takes years – not days.
  • Outstanding repairs and maintenance items will get more complicated and more expensive the longer they are deferred.
  • There is no way the TDSB will or should sell off all 130 schools operating at below 65% for many, many good reasons (see any number of blog posts on this site!).

So let’s use the following equation to summarize the math here:

$3-billion total backlog of repairs/maintenance across TDSB schools

less: (130 schools operating at less than 65% X $10-million/per school sold in revenue)

less: (130 schools X $5.1-million/school in saved repairs/maintenance costs if all 130 schools sold) 

equals: $1.04-billion of outstanding repairs/maintenance that would still exist across TDSB schools even if the TDSB immediately sold off all 130 schools operating below 65% 

Clearly, we need a different approach to funding our public schools than the one being proposed by Kathleen Wynne’s government to ensure our children attend safe and well-maintained schools.