Tag Archives: Online Learning

Our Public Schools: Critical Infrastructure In Need of True Investment

May 11, 2021

Public Schools are Critical Infrastructure – as are Paid Sick Days

The Oxford English dictionary defines infrastructure as, “the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.” Since the inception of the Fix Our Schools campaign back in 2014, we’ve proposed that publicly funded schools are critical infrastructure and must be prioritized and funded as such by both our provincial and federal governments.

Amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of prioritizing schools as critical infrastructure has been highlighted. Issues such as the $16.3-billion repair backlog in Ontario’s schools prior to the pandemic’s start, a lack of any standard of good repair for Ontario’s schools, and the need for proper ventilation in classrooms and schools to prevent COVID’s aerosol spread have all come to the forefront.

More recently, Fix Our Schools joined the call for paid sick days, recognizing that addressing the root causes of COVID-19 spread in communities was absolutely necessary for public schools to be considered safe for in-person learning. In essence, a paid sick days program has become a necessary part of our public infrastructure that enables Ontario’s workers to stay home when feeling unwell, get tested for COVID, self-isolate if needed, and get vaccinated. 

The Ford government was incredibly slow to recognize paid sick days as critical public infrastructure. After 15 months of workplace outbreaks being a key driver in COVID-19 spread, our provincial government finally came to the table with a paid sick days plan. This plan, coming amidst a horrific third wave, has been declared “pitifully inadequate” by opposition parties and medical establishment. Workers only receive 3 days (instead of 10-14 as recommended), and the plan is only temporary, expiring in September 2021.

Ventilation and Air Quality in Classrooms and Schools

The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly highlighted that public schools are critical infrastructure in our society. The need for ventilation in classrooms has become a priority as good ventilation was proven to significantly reduce COVID transmission. Fix Our Schools has always advocated for good ventilation and air quality as integral to creating healthy, safe, optimum learning environments, and we began exerting pressure on our provincial government as early as June 2020 to prioritize investing in schools as critical infrastructure to ensure a safe re-opening of Ontario’s public schools.

By mid-June, the Ford government had issued a loose “approach” to school re-opening in Ontario that recognized improved ventilation in classrooms and schools as a key factor in safe reopening but, surprisingly, the Ford government did not allocate any new funding to school boards to make ventilation improvements. This was akin to a parent sending a child to a grocery store to buy the family’s groceries and giving them zero dollars to do so – a clear set-up for failure.

By the end of June, Fix Our Schools had crowd-sourced details on ventilation in classrooms across Ontario, and the news was not good.

In fact, many schools across the province have classrooms with no windows, windows that do not open, and/or windows that only open a tiny bit – hardly conducive to good air-flow and ventilation:

“The HVAC system at York Humber High School in Toronto has been broken for more than a decade.”

“My daughter attends Tom Thomson School in Burlington. Her classroom this year only had windows along the top of the outside classroom wall. These windows were not reachable, provided very little natural light, and did not open.“

“Harry Bowes Public School in Whitchurch-Stouffville is a lovely school and built within the past 20 years. However, the air circulation is terrible, and windows barely even open. Most teachers and students are continually sick and allergies are a problem while in the building as well.”

“Memorial City Elementary School in Hamilton is 100 years old and the dust coming out of the ventilation system seems that old too. While the windows are newer, the tracks are so badly gummed up that only a couple can be opened and they cannot open much.”

“At Mount Hope School in Hamilton, the upper-level windows do not open at all and the lower level windows only open a bit.”

“As a parent, I’ve been concerned about poor ventilation, no fresh air at Equinox Alternative School in Toronto for years! I am a volunteer in the school and can confirm it is almost never a comfortable temperature. With the added serious concerns regarding COVID-19, and the clear medical guidance (commissioned by the Province!) that fresh air can help reduce transmission, it’s the time to invest in windows.”

“At Earl of March Secondary School in Ottawa, there are many interior classrooms that do not have windows. The school is 50 years old and the HVAC has never worked properly.”

“At Holy Trinity Catholic Elementary School in Sudbury, the kindergarten classroom has no windows. It used to be a resource room, but was converted into a regular classroom due to increased enrollment.”

And still, no funding provided by our provincial government so that school boards could actually start addressing ventilation issues. In fact, even by the end of July, the Ford government had not provided any additional funding for school boards to use for ventilation improvements. As of late July, Minister Lecce was still insisting that the routine $1.4-B/year funding for school repair and renewal (NOTE: this inadequate level of “investment” had led to a $16.3-B repair backlog in Ontario schools), ought to be sufficient for school boards to make schools safe to re-open amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. This was recognized as untenable, as evidenced by the Toronto Star Editorial Board’s piece on July 27, 2020 entitled, “Ontario’s back-to-school plan must come with cash“, “whatever the exact amount, it will be money well spent. As a society, we have to figure out a way to make the return to school both successful and safe. When the province unveils its back-to-school plan this week, it should also provide its own estimate of the cost — and assure Ontarians that it will find the money. Students, parents, and educators deserve no less.“ 

It was not until July 30, that the Ford government started to realize that school boards would, in fact, require additional funding to make schools safe for re-opening. Too late to make a difference for a September re-opening, Education Minister Lecce finally announced a mere $50-M in funding for school boards to improve ventilation in classrooms, waiting a full two months after SickKids had clearly identified ventilation as a key element to safe in-person learning. The $50-M in funding for ventilation equated to approximately $10,000 per school in Ontario. This was too little funding provided far too late – mere weeks before schools were re-opening.

Fix Our Schools identified that ventilation continued to be a big concern in Ontario’s schools as of late August – mere weeks before schools were meant to re-open. Experts agreed with this assessment:

As Ontario’s children are relegated to exclusive at-home learning for the third time amidst this pandemic, ventilation continues to be a hot topic. It is one of the keys to safe in-person learning amidst a pandemic, and our hope is that good ventilation and air quality will continue to be prioritized well beyond this pandemic as a key element of safe, healthy, effective school infrastructure.

Moving Forward in Education Planning

Education Minister Lecce just made the annual GSN (Grants for Student Needs) announcements, which provide further details to Ontario’s school boards on how previously announced funding in the provincial budget must be allocated. Economist Ricardo Tranjan reminded us that the last provincial budget in November did not contain good news for education funding.

Minister Lecce also proudly revealed “additional funding” of $1.6-B for COVID-related costs that had not been included in the most recent provincial budget. This announcement was received with skepticism by many. Liz Stuart, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, commented that this provincial funding “does not keep pace” with boards’ actual costs and “while Minister Lecce trumpets ‘additional funding’ to respond to COVID-19, it should not be lost on anyone that he is providing the same inadequate amount as last year.”

Embedded in Minister Lecce’s announcements last week was also a clear intent to move forward with cementing online learning as a choice within our public education system. This seems like yet another example of the Ford government using the cover of the COVID-pandemic to push its own political agenda; in this instance – an expansion of online learning. 

 

Noticeably absent from the provincial announcements last week was any discussion of whether Ontario’s schools might re-open at all this school year for in-person learning. As Dr. Daphne Korczak, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and Chair of the Canadian Pediatric Society’s Mental Health Task Force and Dr. Mark Feldman, a pediatrician and vice president of the Canadian Pediatric Society, wrote in an opinion piece entitled, For the sake of the kids, don’t write off the school year just yet, “Is the plan to quietly let the clock run down, rather than to determine how to provide students with at least a few weeks of quasi-normalcy and closure — so important at the end of the year — especially for students in transition to new schools and new surroundings?

As physicians, we support evidence-based measures that will stem this third wave. We are part of the health care system, and we worry about it becoming overwhelmed. We are also concerned about the well-being of our colleagues in adult medicine, who have borne an unimaginable burden over these past 14 months.

But we cannot let children and youth become the pandemic’s collateral damage.

School doors should be the first to open and the last to close.“

While Minister Lecce and Premier Ford claim to have prioritized children and education amidst the pandemic, their announcements last week certainly do not support this claim.

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.

Mandates, Money, and Just Plain Mean-Spirited

March 30, 2021

MANDATES

As the Liberal Party of Ontario continues to seek input to build their party platform, leader Steven Del Duca made an interesting announcement on Monday, March  22. He said that that his Liberals would “kill Highway 413 once and for all”, and redirect the $8-billion allocated to this infrastructure project of questionable value towards additional investment in building and repairing publicly funded schools in the province. Hurrah! This could be an education mandate that the Fix Our Schools campaign could certainly get behind, and we hope that all provincial parties will prioritize school infrastructure in their platforms. 

Speaking of mandates, the Globe & Mail’s revelation that the Ford government is “considering legislation that would make remote learning a permanent part of the public-school system” begs the question, “what was the PC party’s education mandate with which the Ford government was handed a majority government?” As Fix Our Schools noted back during the 2018 election, “the PC education platform was scant at best“, and made no mention of addressing the massive repair backlog in Ontario’s schools. Ford’s education mandate did, however, mention banning cell phones in class in order to maximize learning time. So, Ontario voted in a Premier that did not even want cell phones interrupting in-class learning time. Yet, after a year of emergency on-line learning, Premier Ford’s government is looking to fundamentally change the way education is delivered in this province without a mandate from the electorate, and without any understanding of the impact that this year of on-line learning has had on students.   

MONEY

Why is Fix Our Schools so concerned about this proposed legislation since our focus is on ensuring all Ontario schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings? Glad you asked! It is because the provincial budget delivered on March 24 provides no new money for education and schools. 

And so, every dollar “invested” in expanding online learning will actually take money away from school buildings, classrooms, and in-person learning. So, while Minister Lecce claims 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.

Although, after seeing Minister Lecce try to explain the provincial budget’s impact on schools and public education, we’re not sure our Minister of Education understands how provincial funding of education actually works:

Further to this confusing statement by Minister Lecce, the budget document touts that, “investments in schools are investments in the future and contribute to the long-term economic prosperity of the province”. Yes! Fix Our Schools agrees! However, then the budget document states, “this is why the government is investing about $14 billion in capital grants over 10 years to build more schools, upgrade existing facilities across Ontario and support education-related projects. This includes $1.4 billion in school renewal for the 2021–22 school year, which will ensure excellent learning environments. As part of the government’s ongoing efforts to improve and modernize infrastructure, Ontario is investing $550 million in the 2020–21 school year to build 20 new schools and eight permanent additions to existing schools.”  OK. Stop right there. Are you as confused as we are about these statements?

Investing “about” $14-billion over 10 years equates to “about” $1.4-billion per year. I think we can all agree that math makes sense? What doesn’t add up is that the total amount being allocated only for school repair and renewal for 2021-22 is $1.4-billion. Yet, the budget document states that a separate amount of $550-million has been allocated for 2021-22 to build new schools and additions, which brings the total investment for 2021-22 to “about” $1.95-billion. So, if our math is correct, wouldn’t this yearly level of investment in schools require a 10-year commitment of “about” $19.5-billion, which is significantly more than the $14-billion mentioned? Does this mean that next year, we can expect a drastic cut? We’re simply not sure.

Furthermore, it is important to note that the $1.95-billion/year funding allocation for school infrastructure in 2021-22 is roughly the same amount as the previous several years. And, this level of funding has resulted in year-over-year increases in overall disrepair in Ontario schools. Therefore, with a $16.3-billion repair backlog in Ontario’s schools and no significant new funding, it is hard to imagine that $1.95-billion will somehow during this budget cycle lead to “excellent learning environments”?  Again, the math used in this budget document simply does not add up to Fix Our Schools, nor does the rosy picture Minister Lecce paints of “excellent learning environments” with no new investments.

AND JUST PLAIN MEAN-SPIRITED

Fix Our Schools became aware of this 3-page memo that was sent from the Ministry of Education to all school boards on March 8, 2021, letting school boards know they are “required to display Ontario Builds signage at the site of construction that identifies the financial support of the Government of Ontario” and that “all expenses related to Ontario Builds signage, such as design, production, and installation are the responsibility of the school board. School boards are also responsible for posting the signs in a prominent, high-traffic location in a timely manner.” 

This is a mean-spirited action by a government that, time and again, fails to prioritize students, schools, and our public education system. This is a provincial government that, instead, prioritizes self-promotion, and getting re-elected. Fix Our Schools would suggest that this money, time, and energy would be much better invested in actually repairing, renewing, and rebuilding Ontario’s publicly funded schools rather than on a marketing and promotion campaign for the Ford government.