Tag Archives: Transparency

A Plan for September, Transparency, Data, Metrics & Funding

July 8, 2021

What is the Plan for September Premier Ford?

Ontario parents, students, teachers and education workers continue to wait for the Ford government to release a well-funded, research-based, comprehensive plan for September that prioritizes Ontario’s children, their learning and their mental health.

Meanwhile, news is surfacing about the concerning impact of the pandemic and school closures on Ontario’s children. In a July 8, 2021 Toronto Star article entitled, “Very, very concerning: Pandemic taking heavy toll on children’s mental health, Sick Kids study shows”, Dr. Catherine Birken, a senior scientist and pediatrician at Sick Kids, states that for September, she hopes “there will be a heightened focus on in-person learning that includes the return of extracurricular activities and other support programs, including mental health services, while reducing disruptions to schooling.”

Amidst the frustrating wait for a back-to-school plan from the provincial government and this worrisome news about Ontario children’s mental health, Fix Our Schools was at least pleased to see the TDSB, Canada’s largest school board, carry on its commitment to transparency and advocacy.

TDSB Continues its Commitment to Transparency and Advocacy

Back in August, 2016, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) took a leadership position in transparency. Working with Fix Our Schools, the TDSB became the first school board to publicly release disrepair details on a school-by-school basis. Even though the provincial government had been collecting this school disrepair data for years, the Ministry of Education had never publicly released this data, so back in August 2016, Fix Our Schools was pleased to see the Ministry of Education follow the TDSB’s lead in transparency and release disrepair details for all Ontario schools a few days after the TDSB. We had had been calling for transparency on disrepair data, believing that transparency was critical to acknowledging the magnitude of the problem of disrepair in Ontario’s schools and then to move to finding solutions.

Thankfully, the TDSB has maintained its commitment to regularly updating and publicly sharing the disrepair data for its 588 schools. Fix Our Schools commends the TDSB for this commitment to transparency and was pleased to read the TDSB media release on July 8, 2021, with updated disrepair data for every TDSB school.

In conjunction with reviewing the detailed data on TDSB school disrepair, you may find our 2017 blog entitled, 10 Things you Need to Know About Your School’s Repair Backlog to be informative. It is an “oldie but a goodie” – and sadly, still very relevant. In addition, the TDSB media release on July 8, 2021 clearly outlined that:

  • Our provincial government is responsible for all funding for public education and schools, and that TDSB schools have been underfunded by the our provincial government for many years. Fix Our Schools believes that the TDSB is not unique in this regard, and that all school boards have been chronically and grossly underfunded by successive provincial governments.
  • The Province has allocated $275-million to the TDSB to use for school repair and renewal in the 2021-22 school year, when the TDSB repair backlog in its 588 schools is a gob-smacking $3.7-billion and estimated to continue to grow each year without more financial commitment from our provincial government.
  • Education Development Charges (EDCs) represent an opportunity for an additional $500-million in new revenue for the TDSB over the next 15 years, if the provincial government amended its regulation guiding the eligibility for and use of this money. For years, the TDSB and Fix Our Schools have been asking our provincial government to amend its outdated regulations on EDCs. To date, no changes have occurred, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars in developers’ pockets rather than invested in Ontario’s schools.

In stark contrast to the TDSB’s ongoing commitment to transparency, Fix Our Schools has been consistently disappointed with the Ford government’s lack of transparency. Since taking power in June 2018, Premier Ford’s government has consistently ignored calls to update and publicly release disrepair data for all of Ontario’s schools.  While our provincial government continues to use our tax dollars to collect school disrepair data each year, the only glimpse the public gets into this data is when a member of the opposition party asks a pointed question in a legislative committee meeting.

In November 2019, Education Critic Marit Stiles was able to glean from the government that the overall repair backlog in Ontario’s schools had increased to $16.3-B. As at June 9, 2021, Minister Lecce admitted that the overall repair backlog in Ontario’s schools had increased again to reach $16.8-billion. Of note is that this huge, and growing, repair backlog number does not even include assessments of portables, nor items such as indoor air quality improvements, air conditioning to address extreme temperatures, or asbestos remediation.

 

Fix Our Schools has consistently advocated for transparency; data and metrics to gauge outcomes; and adequate, stable funding to ensure that all Ontario’s publicly funded schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained and conducive to learning. Ontario’s children deserve nothing less. 

Premier Ford and Minister Lecce – when will you make a commitment to prioritize Ontario’s children? The clock is ticking.

Transparency: A Building Block of Effectiveness and Efficiency

February 9, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is not transparency.

How the Ford Government Has Failed Us

January 26, 2021

On January 21, 2021, SickKids released this updated version of their Guidance for School Operation During the Pandemic document.

In the release of this updated document, Dr. Ronald Cohn, President and CEO, SickKids, and co-author of the document stated, “When considering public health measures aimed at curbing community transmission of COVID-19, it is our strong opinion that schools should be the last doors to close and the first to open in society. The current school closures need to be as time-limited as possible. It is therefore imperative that bundled measures of infection prevention and control and a robust testing strategy are in place. Additional delays will inevitably further exacerbate the harms to children and the inequities caused by school closures.”

In the summary of this updated document, the most significant changes include testing recommendations, enhanced physical distancing and non-medical mask use, emphasis on cohorting, and updates to the section on mental health and wellness.

Ironically, on the same day, the Toronto Star published an article by Rachel Mendleson entitled, “Internal government documents show how Ontario ‘watered down’ its strategies to keep COVID-19 out of classrooms“, where over 450 pages of briefing notes, memos, and reports from the senior civil servant in the Ministry of Education (read: unelected and nonpartisan!) to Minister Lecce (read: elected and partisan!), that had been obtained via a Freedom of Information request, were examined and commented upon:

“It looks like, originally, they (unelected, non-partisan civil servants) had a lot of things covered, but what they (elected, partisan politicians) ended up implementing … was ‘plan lite.’ You know, let’s take it, but massage it so it’s not as stringent, not as costly. It’s frustrating to see things watered down.” – Andrea Grebenc, Chair of the Halton District School Board

After reviewing the documents that include proposals for safety measures that did not come to fruition related to testing, symptom screening, and class sizes:

“Given where we are right now, it’s hard to look back at that, and think about potential alternate universes where we might have done all of these things that were recommended. It’s like we had these branch points and we picked the wrong path to take.” – Ashleigh Tuite, an epidemiologist from the University of Toronto

Last week, Fix Our Schools addressed a question that had been posed many times,  “Is Premier Ford “doing the best that he can”, given these very challenging circumstances?, and the answer we delivered was, unequivocally, no. In fact, we would go so far as to say the Ford government has failed students, teachers, education workers, families, and communities.

Fix Our Schools has consistently argued that Premier Ford and Minister Lecce could have (and should have) done more to ensure Ontario’s students could learn safely in-person back in their classrooms. So, on a day when SickKids emphasized the importance of in-person learning for Ontario’s children, we were particularly struck by the findings outlined in the Toronto Star article presented above. These findings certainly rendered meaningless the claims by both our Premier and our Minister of Education that “no expense was being spared” and that “everything possible was being done by this government to ensure Ontario students could safely learn in classrooms”.

In a January 25th CBC article, the provincial government shared that its plan to reopen Ontario’s schools “has been informed by the best medical and scientific minds in the country, including SickKids and other hospitals.“. Wow. This is a shocking statement by our government, given that we know only a fraction of medical and scientific advice on the safe operation of schools amidst this pandemic has been heeded by this government.

The role of Ontario’s Auditor-General, seems well-suited to examine this glaringly negligent behaviour of the Ford government, and we call upon her office to critically examine what this government has actually done to ensure the safety and well-being of students, teachers, and education workers amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

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.

 

Ask YOUR Trustee to publish data on your local school conditions

March 9, 2018

We instinctively know that our governments are accountable when voters are able to assess what and how they are doing. But how do we evaluate the use of our tax dollars? That’s dependent on our having the freedom to access the reports and actions of those who spend them.

At Fix Our Schools we supported the TDSB’s work to give parents access to the true nature of the school buildings in their purview. We were very proud of the board when they published repair lists for every school. Now a TDSB parent can monitor the condition of their children’s school. We haven’t found another school board who publishes the repair backlog for every school in their board. (If you know of another, please contact us!)

We spoke to Robin Pilkey, chair of the TDSB, about why THIS board viewed publishing as an important step for Ontario’s largest school board.

“The TDSB felt that publishing clear and transparent repair data for every one of our schools was an important step towards parents understanding the state of their children’s schools. Two decades of underfunding of school repairs by our provincial government has led to an accumulation of a repair backlog of over $4 Billion in the TDSB’s 583 school buildings. Annual provincial funding has increased drastically in recent years, which is excellent but we still need to find funding solutions for the repair backlog that accrued when annual provincial funding was only one-tenth or less of what industry standards suggest it ought to have been to keep our school buildings in a state of good repair.”

So Fix Our Schools asks: if the TDSB can collate data for 583 schools, publish it on 583 websites and update it annually, why can’t all the other school boards in Ontario do it too?

School trustees are elected by us and work for us. Take a moment to attend a ward meeting, shake your trustee’s hand and ask for your school’s repair list. Or, attend a school council meeting and ask your council Chair to request the data from the trustee; it is the public’s data.

As voters, we need to be able to have informed conversation about publicly-owned school buildings and this is a necessary step toward that goal.

Have we even stopped the bleeding on the $15-Billion repair backlog in Ontario’s schools?

September 13, 2017

In August 2016, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) led the way in transparency, when it released detailed information on disrepair in its schools, including both Facility Condition Index (FCI)  and the Renewal Needs Backlog. 

Feeling pressure to follow suit, the Ministry of Education released information on disrepair for all Ontario schools, confirming that over $15-Billion of disrepair existed in our publicly funded schools. 

The Ministry of Education has increased funding for school repairs significantly over the past three years. In fact, since 2014 when Fix Our Schools began, funding for school repairs has increased by $1.25-Billion/year to $1.4-billion/year – the level it always ought to have been. As a result, a lot of work has been done to schools this past year and a lot of work is continuing to happen at schools to address disrepair.

How much of the $15-Billion repair backlog has been addressed? Citizens will have no idea unless the data that the Ministry of Education released a year ago is updated each year and made public. It would be nice to know if we’ve even stopped the bleeding on the year-over-year increase in disrepair in the buildings where 2-million Ontario children spend their days! 

This type of accountability seems highly reasonable. Our schools certainly don’t look as if everything has been fixed!

If the provincial government claims that $1.4-billion/year for school repairs is sufficient to ensure that all Ontario children attend safe, well-maintained schools then we deserve to know how this funding has actually impacted our children’s schools. 

So Minister Hunter, “When can we expect to see updated data about the FCI ratings and outstanding repairs for all Ontario schools”? 

Shame on you for even making us ask. Your Ministry should, in the interest of being transparent and accountable, automatically update and issue this information every year!