Tag Archives: Kathleen Wynne

School building conditions matter

May 5, 2015

The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) recently released a fascinating report called “School Environment Impact: Research Study”, summarizing research that has been conducted on the relationship between student performance and school maintenance/cleanliness.

Not surprisingly, a link between the condition of a school building and the achievement of its students was noted and is being seen in a growing body of research. While most of this research comes from the United States, surely we can easily apply these findings to our Ontario public schools and students?

One particularly interesting study cited in the OSSTF report is entitled, “Healthy Schools are Clean, Dry, and Productive”, by Dr. Michael Berry. Berry states that: “a school’s interior climate, appearance, and cleanliness send either a positive or negative message to students, teachers, and staff. Emerging evidence suggests that environmental conditions that create a sense of ‘well-being’ and send a ‘caring message’ contribute directly to positive attitudes and elevated performance as measured by fewer health complaints, improved student attendance, teacher retention, and higher test scores.”

Berry also states that “schools are high activity environments that need constant attention in the form of cleaning, maintenance, and repair.” Berry indicates that maintaining the condition of the school is a necessary and cost effective way of improving student performance, stating that: “there is growing evidence that when a school building is in disrepair, teaching and student achievement suffers; the school environment works against the educational process. Public school systems too often elect to postpone repairs and delay construction of new facilities to divert money during periods of financial austerity. Making cuts in roof repair, maintenance, and cleaning is mistakenly considered less devastating than slashing academic programs.”

The OSSTF report cites many other research studies and the consistent finding is that the condition of our children’s schools matters. So if school conditions impact student achievement, why has Kathleen Wynne’s government allowed $14.7-billion of outstanding large repairs accumulate in public schools across the province?

Write a letter to Premier Wynne and Minister Sandals

April 25, 2015

On April 24, Fix Our Schools launched a letter writing campaign to send a clear message to Premier Wynne and MInister Sandals that funding solutions must be found to address the urgent issues that impact 246,000 students and their families.

The full body of the letter being sent is below and if you have found your way to this page and would like to send a letter, please click here:

Dear Premier Wynne, Minister Sandals, Deputy Minister Zegarac,

While governance of school boards is important, funding of school boards is even more important in resolving the issues that impact students’ daily safety, wellbeing, and ability to learn. The TDSB Governance Advisory Panel consultations exclude discussion of funding and, as such, delay the pursuit of funding solutions to urgent issues such as the $3.3-billion repair backlog, cuts to special education and overcrowding at 146 TDSB schools.

TDSB Governance consultations also exclude the Province’s role in governance, even though the Province has power over both the money and major policy decisions. In refusing to take any responsibility, your government is undermining public confidence in the TDSB. As such, will you please:

1. Start working with the TDSB and the City of Toronto to find funding solutions to resolve key issues such as the $3.3-billion TDSB repair backlog?

2. Start fulfilling your stated mandate of using schools as community hubs and acknowledge that selling off public schools is an incomplete funding solution to the $3.3-billion repair backlog and could be shortsighted? *Even if the TDSB were to immediately sell all 130 schools operating below 65% utilization (as per provincial calculations), there would be over $1-billion of repairs in the remaining 458 schools.

3. Release emergency funding immediately to repair all leaking roofs and complete every “urgent” repair currently outstanding at TDSB schools to ensure children attend school in safe, well-maintained buildings?

4. Commit that any recommendations from the TDSB Governance Panel concerning board reorganization, such as splitting up the TDSB into smaller boards, will not delay the Province’s pursuit of funding to the above-noted problems?

There are $14.7-billion in capital repairs needed right now in public schools across Ontario. The $11-billion your government plans to allocate over the next 10 years to building new schools and making capital repairs is grossly insufficient to address the current state of disrepair in public schools. Given the $14.7-billion capital repair backlog in Ontario’s public schools, the $248-million that was noted as a decrease in education sector expense in yesterday’s budget surely ought to have been used towards ensuring the two million children in Ontario who attend public schools learn in safe, well-maintained buildings.

Kind regards,

Your Name

Your Address

246,000 TDSB students don’t need a governance panel

April 13, 2015

The provincially led TDSB Governance Panel is simply a distraction from the more urgent issue of inadequate funding and will not address the issues that actually matter to parents such as:

the $3.3-billion TDSB repair backlog
potential school closures
cuts to special education
overcrowding at 146 TDSB schools (although you never hear about this in the media, there are actually more overutilzed TDSB schools (operating at 100%+) than “underutilized” TDSB schools.

What would address these issues is if Kathleen Wynne’s government were to take responsibility, as the sole funder of public education in this province, and start working with the TDSB to find funding solutions to these massive problems. Instead, this provincial panel seems to place all blame on the TDSB, which only serves to undermine public confidence in Canada’s largest school board and does nothing to help 246,000 TDSB students and their families.

Fix Our Schools sent a Letter to Premier Wynne and Minister Sandals urging their government to stop blaming the TDSB and start working with the TDSB (and the City!) to find funding solutions to resolve the issues that actually matter to people in Toronto.

Over 20 years to fix our schools at this rate

March 31, 2015

The provincial government has allocated more money to the TDSB to fix its schools than it has in previous years and Fix Our Schools has been given some credit for this move! The TDSB will receive $112-million for “school condition renewal” in 2015-16. This represents a significant increase from the $29-million the TDSB received from Kathleen Wynne’s government this school year and, perhaps, is a small acknowledgment of past underfunding.

So, funding for fixing TDSB schools is heading in the right direction. If we take the $112-million being provided via the Grant for School Condition Improvement and add this to the expected $45.5-million being provided via the annual grant for school renewal, we are looking at a total of $157.5-million/year for the TDSB to fix its schools.

However, at this new level of funding, the current $3.3-billion repair backlog (recently revised from $3-billion based on provincial data) plaguing TDSB schools would take almost 21 years to address. And this, of course, assumes that nothing else goes wrong in a TDSB school for the next two decades. The truth, of course, is that the longer we take to address these repairs, the more complicated and costly they become so we seem to be in a conundrum of never getting ahead of this massive repair backlog.

So while we are thrilled that the provincial government has allocated more money this coming year for the TDSB to fix its schools, we are disappointed that Kathleen Wynne’s government refuses to take accountability for finding a complete funding solution to this massive issue that impacts 247,000 students.

Public Schools in same pickle as Toronto Community Housing

March 31, 2015

While reading this blog post, please keep in mind that Toronto Public Schools are facing an eerily similar challenge to that being faced by Toronto Community Housing. There is a $3-billion repair backlog plaguing TDSB schools that must be addressed immediately. However, the provincial government – the sole funder of public schools in Ontario – refuses to take accountability for this massive issue. As you read the remainder of this blog post, keep in mind that the combined repairs needed in TDSB schools and in Toronto Community Housing units exceeds $10-billion. We are on a scary trajectory if these billions of dollars of repairs aren’t addressed – and soon.

On March 30, John Tory and Toronto Community Housing revealed a plan to address the $1.7-billion of additional funding required to address the $7.5-billion of repairs required in Toronto’s Community Housing units over the next 30 years. This plan’s success hinges on the federal and provincial governments funding a large part of these repairs. In his column in the Star, Edward Keenan suggests this is unlikely. He estimates that for the City to take on the additional $1.7-billion required for repairs would require a dedicated property tax increase of 3% for the next 30 years.

Keenan agrees with John Tory’s argument that “the moral and business cases illustrated by this study make a bullet-proof case for why the Ontario and federal governments should invest now to repair housing.” However, Keenan points out that while the moral and business cases for supporting social housing have been clear for a long time, higher levels of government have continued to download responsibility and accountability for this important public good.

Keenan suggests that if Torontonians do not take on the responsibility to fund these repairs and the higher levels of government also refuse, then Toronto Community Housing units will crumble around the existing tenants, many units will be closed as they become uninhabitable and those tenants will be forced into a private housing market where they might become homeless.

Toronto Public Schools are in the same predicament. Schools are starting to crumble around students and teachers. Will we close schools as they become uninhabitable and force parents to send their children to private schools? Ideally, the province and feds need to step up and start funding public schools as an integral part of our public infrastructure. The province, in particular, which holds all the power over funding at the moment, must start working with the TDSB and the City to figure out funding solutions to ensure that students attend school in safe, well-maintained buildings. While heartening to see the City so engaged in these issues, it is equally disheartening to see Kathleen Wynne’s government so disengaged in real discussions on funding.

Buildings continue to deteriorate as TDSB governance reviewed

March 26, 2015

Back in March 2008, when Kathleen Wynne was Minister of Education, she gave the TDSB Trustees two months to figure out a better governance structure for the TDSB. Wynne said that in the 10 years since the provincial government had mandated the amalgamation of six school boards to create Canada’s largest school board, the TDSB hadn’t managed to “come together properly”. Seven years later, this same provincial government apparently still hasn’t figured out a governance solution that works for Canada’s largest school board.

On March 16, 2015, Kathleen Wynne’s government announced that it had appointed a seven member advisory panel to make recommendations on how to improve the governance structure at the TDSB. This advisory panel is to conduct public consultations from March-May 2015 and, based on these consultations, make recommendations on governance changes by Summer 2015.

So for the last seven years, this Liberal provincial government has failed to make the governance changes required for the TDSB to “come together properly”, has continued to ignore funding as a potential root cause of many TDSB issues, and has allowed the repair backlog in TDSB schools to accumulate to $3.3-billion. In failing to take accountability for finding funding solutions to address the $3.3-billion repair backlog that plagues TDSB schools, this provincial government has ignored the safety and well-being of the 246,000 students who attend school at the TDSB.

This Liberal provincial government has been in power since 2003. They are the sole funder of public education in this province and also hold power over all major policy decisions. Enough is enough – the almost 13% of Ontario’s students who attend school at the TDSB deserve to learn in safe, well-maintained buildings. When is this provincial government going to take the accountability that is commensurate with the power they currently have over public education and make decisions that enable fixing our schools?

CTV News covers #fixourschools twitter campaign!

February 28, 2015

CTV helped launch the #fixourschools twitter campaign on Feb. 27. Click here to have a look!

Fix Our Schools wants to raise awareness of the unacceptable state of TDSB schools and encourage Kathleen Wynne’s government to work with the TDSB and the City to come up with funding and governance solutions to address the over $3-billion of outstanding repairs in our children’s schools.

#fixourschools twitter campaign

February 28, 2015

Use #fixourschools to tweet about how the TDSB’s $3-billion backlog of repairs impacts students and teachers every day or, if Twitter isn’t your thing, contact us to share photos and stories. Students and teachers deserve to learn and work in safe, well-maintained buildings. The fact that students continue to achieve despite the deplorable conditions of many TDSB buildings is testament to the amazing things that go on inside TDSB schools every day.

However, to ensure the safety and well-being of students and teachers, Kathleen Wynne’s government must take the accountability that comes with being in charge of funding and work with the TDSB and the City of Toronto to address the unacceptable state of disrepair in TDSB schools.

So, with the intent of raising awareness to encourage solution-oriented dialogue, we hope you’ll share!

Kathleen Wynne is uniquely qualified

February 26, 2015

In a passionate response to concerns expressed by Conservative MPP Monte McNaughton about a different topic altogether, Kathleen Wynne outlined exactly why she is uniquely qualified to be the Premier who works together with the TDSB and the City of Toronto to “fix our schools”.

“Is it that I’m a mother? Is it that I have a master’s of education? Is it that I was a school council chair? Is it that I was the minister of education? What is it, exactly, that disqualifies me from doing the job that I am doing?”
– Kathleen Wynne, February 24, 2015 at Queen’s Park

Wynne was also a former Toronto School Board Trustee (funny that she doesn’t mention this qualification!) and a mediator – also both beneficial qualifications to “fix our schools”.

Province’s response to Fix Our Schools’ letter asking for help

February 10, 2015

In Education Minister Sandals’ response letter to the letter that Fix Our Schools sent in November, 2014, she highlights that:

For the 2014-15 school year, the Ministry is providing the TDSB with $74.9-million to use for repairs and renovations. This amount represents 2.1% of the total backlog of $3.5-billion outstanding across all TDSB school buildings.
School boards are responsible for determining how to allocate the funding provided by the Ministry to ensure that students have safe and healthy learning environments. Locally elected Trustees are responsible for the provision of suitable and adequate accommodation for students in their jurisdiction. Trustees are responsible for ensuring that each school is in compliance with all appropriate provincial and municipal health and safety requirements.

Minister Sandals encourages us to discuss our concerns with our Trustees, who are the ones accountable.

Trustees are not magicians. The funds provided by the Province to the TDSB for taking care of its school buildings are insufficient and Kathleen Wynne’s government needs to take the accountability and responsibility that comes with being in control over the money. It is time for the Province to stop blaming the TDSB and work together to ensure our children attend school in safe, well-maintained buildings.