Tag Archives: Schools

First day of summer in Ontario schools

June 20, 2016

This first official day of summer is hot. With humidity – it will feel even hotter. But school isn’t out for the summer yet. Across Ontario, 2-million students and thousands of teachers and staff will be in schools today – most without the benefit of air conditioning.

Temperatures in classrooms of old Ontario schools will soar to 40 plus degrees today. Victor Ferreira explores this issue as it pertains to Toronto schools in the article entitled, “It’s stinking hot. So why do so few of Toronto’s schools have air conditioning?” in the June 20, 2016 edition of the National Post.

If Ferreira had explored the issue province-wide, the article would have been very much the same story. Ontario’s school temperatures are an issue both in the winter, when many classrooms are too cold to learn, and in the fall/spring/summer, when temperatures inside old schools with no air conditioning are too hot.

However you analyze the issue, to fix it, we need more money to Fix Our Schools. Premier Wynne, will you prioritize Ontario’s publicly funded schools and allocate funding to ensure all Ontario students attend buildings that are safe, well-maintained and provide environments conducive to learning?

Why have poor school conditions in Ontario not received more attention?

May 16, 2016

Disrepair in publicly funded schools is complicated. Through our work with Fix Our Schools, we have found that at every turn, stakeholders involved in this issue are reluctant to shine a light on disrepair in Ontario’s schools:

  • Parents don’t want to believe they drop their children off at a school that is in disrepair and so would rather focus on the great things happening in their children’s schools.  
  • Teachers don’t have time or the political will to be the “squeaky wheel” every time there is disrepair in their school that needs addressing. 
  • Principals and Superintendents don’t wish to highlight their school(s) as being in poor condition and risk unleashing a maelstrom of parent anger and frustration (many parents we speak to actually blame principals and caretakers for the disrepair they notice in their children’s schools, which is totally not the case at all!). 
  • Trustees and School Boards don’t want to risk “biting the hand that feeds them” so tend to be “careful” about naming the provincial government’s funding as the root cause of disrepair in schools.
  • Teachers Unions represent individual teacher health and safety concerns when teachers raise these issues. However, they have not focused on disrepair in schools and the impact on teacher working conditions as a key negotiation issue to date.
  • Media want photographs of schools in disrepair to illustrate in vivid detail how disrepair looks and create a newsworthy, sensational story. However, they are unable to get permission to access these schools because no principal wants to be the school featured (understandable!) and so media has not provided adequate coverage to this important issue.   

And so, disrepair in schools gets ignored again and again and continues to get worse – either because of lack of perspective, time, bandwidth, courage, interest, or political will.

So, collectively, we’ve all in some small way allowed the provincial government to continue to underfund school buildings over the past several decades. To fix our schools, we must come together to not only shine a light on this issue but to demand action on this issue from our provincial government. 

To make matters more complicated, much of the $15-billion of disrepair in schools is invisible to the naked eye. Structural concerns, repairs to fire alarm and suppression systems go unnoticed until they fail. You won’t know that the boiler at a school should have been replaced ten years ago until it stops working in February and school gets cancelled for a day! You won’t know that the fire alarm system was broken until … well – you get the idea. So much of the disrepair lurks beneath the surface and is impossible to illustrate, which means people don’t know about it and cannot shine a light on it. 

Asbestos in aging school buildings

April 26, 2016

On April 26, 2016, ETFO issued this press release:

Aging school buildings prompt the Elementary Teachers Federatino of Ontario (ETFO) to join call for national ban on asbestos

With asbestos in aging school buildings a leading health concern, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) has added its voice to the call for a national ban on asbestos.

The call by the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) for a ban on asbestos coincides with the April 28th National Day of Mourning, which commemorates workers who lost their lives or became sick or injured due to their work. Asbestos is the number one cause of occupational death in Canada, with more than 2,000 people dying every year from diseases caused by exposure to asbestos including mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis. Deaths from mesothelioma increased 60 per cent between 2000 and 2012 according to the CLC.

“We are concerned for our members, students and school communities as asbestos-containing materials such as ceiling tiles and pipe insulation can be present in aging school buildings within view and within reach,” said ETFO President Sam Hammond. “The intense activity in classrooms, hallways and gymnasiums can contribute to asbestos disturbance and put the school at risk.”

In 2014, the ETFO MOU Task Force on Health and Safety Report and Recommendations included a recommendation that the Ministry of Labour and Ministry of Education work with stakeholders to develop a provincial asbestos guidance document for school boards to manage and mitigate the risks of airborne asbestos exposure in schools. The Task Force report was developed by ETFO and the Ontario Public Supervisory Officers’ Association (OPSOA), with technical support from the Ministries of Education and Labour.

“It also makes practical sense for Ontario to develop a mandatory requirement for a public registry of asbestos in public buildings such as schools and hospitals,” added Hammond. Saskatchewan established such a registry in 2013.

The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario represents 78,000 elementary public school teachers, occasional teachers and education professionals across the province.

Ceiling tiles collapsing in one Ontario school

April 22, 2016

From a Grade 7/8 Teacher in Ontario:

I’m sharing a couple of photos from the Ontario elementary school where I am a teacher. 

2016_April 20_Leaky Ceiling at QuestThe first photo shows a gap in the ceiling of our Common Area where the tiles became bloated and then collapsed over a year ago due to leaking after a heavy rain. 

The building roof has been patched in places, but this particular site continues to spring a leak whenever there’s significant rain. The last time this happened, a Grade 8 student matter-of-factly put out a bucket under the leak and then went about his business as though a leaky roof is to be expected in an Ontario school!

The second photo shows a similar gap in the Grade 8 classroom and lunch room. 2016_April 20_Leaky Ceiling Lunchroom at Quest

We also experience leaks in our kitchen and musical instrument storage, risking damage to expensive and much-needed equipment. Water-stained tiles throughout the school mark the legacy of a leaky roof. The roof has been patched repeatedly over the years, but the filthy tiles remain. 

Our wonderful, supportive parent council and Principal have tried to draw attention to this issue with the powers that be. Our teaching staff and students get on with their daily business with considerable good humour and aplomb. I think it is a shame that these are our working and learning conditions. We have great caretakers who do all they can just to maintain the day-to-day cleanliness of the classroom floors, hallways, stairwell and bathrooms.  

Parents, students and visitors frequently comment on the disrepair in our schools. They  wonder aloud about the possibility of mold, given all the evidence of longstanding water issues. It’s embarrassing and reflects poorly on our school! Some less informed folks have even made remarks that suggest that the fault lies with the teaching staff. This is unfair and hard on morale as we work hard to run a program that we can be proud of. 

The worst part is that in terms of our facility, I know that we are actually quite lucky compared to other schools I’ve visited. 

I hope these photos help shine a light on the issue of maintenance and crumbling infrastructure so that changes can be made to the funding formula and real improvements can be made to schools across our our province. 

A picture is worth 1,000 words

April 18, 2016

Northern

2-million children attend publicly funded schools in Ontario. Many of these schools are crumbling and do not provide an optimum learning environment for children.

Please email Fix Our Schools photos of disrepair in your local schools. A picture is truly worth 1,000 words!

The first step in fixing a problem is Northern 3acknowledging there is a problem. Your photos will ensure that the problem of disrepair in schools is
acknowledged and help move us towards finding solutions to Fix Our Schools!

Parents demanding school repairs at Queen’s Park: CBC Coverage

February 23, 2016

On February 22, Fix Our Schools was at Q2016_CBC_toronto-school-repairsueen’s Park demanding that Kathleen Wynne’s government provide the funding needed to fix Ontario’s crumbling schools, as covered by CBC.

We were joined by teachers, students, childcare advocates, trustees and school board staff to highlight that disrepair in Ontario’s schools is an important issue impacting real people every day. Students, preschoolers, teachers, principals, and community members all deserve safe, well-maintained schools!

 

Our presentation to City-School Boards Committee

February 16, 2016

city of toronto city hallAs you know, Fix Our Schools is an Ontario-wide campaign. However, we are knocking on every door in an effort to raise awareness on disrepair in our schools and encourage action to address the $15-billion of disrepair currently plaguing Ontario’s schools.

With this in mind, Fix Our Schools attended the City of Toronto’s joint City-School Boards Advisory Committee meeting on February 11, 2016 and made this presentation, which calls upon Ontario’s largest municipality to consider how it can work together with all four local school boards to help Fix Our Schools.

CTV covers Fix Our Schools at Queen’s Park

February 9, 2016

Parents continue to express concerns over disrepair in their children’s schools in this CTV piece, which aired on February 2, 2016.

“Our principals are becoming engineers,” said one parent. “They’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing. They’re working on fixing leaks on roofs.”

“Our bathrooms — there’s no privacy because the locks don’t work,” said a Grade 5 student.

“The unfortunate part is that the … physical nature of (my son’s school) is just so degraded that it’s embarrassing,” said another parent.

Time for Premier Wynne to take responsibility

January 26, 2016

Do you ever wonder if giving your kids more chores will make them more responsible and mature? What if you sent them to the store with $5.00 to buy $100.00 worth of groceries and they came back with a few boxes of crackers. Would you be complaining that they didn’t buy everything on the list?

No. You would take responsibility for the fact that, with the money you gave them, they couldn’t possibly have bought $100.00 worth of groceries.

For decades, the Minister for Education of Ontario has not taken just that responsibility. Decades of extreme underfunding means we have a province full of schools with boilers about to fail, roofs leaking and issues with structural elements. The poor quality of the school buildings is affecting the learning of our next generation.

In the last 5 years, the School Boards in Ontario have been given a fraction of what is needed to keep our publicly funded schools in a state of good repair. Imagine anyone holding Ontario school boards responsible for the shocking decline in the condition of our schools when the truth is they have been grossly and chronically underfunded by our provincial government. Every parent knows it. And Premier Wynne needs to take responsibility.