Tag Archives: underfunding

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.

Auditor-General’s Report confirms gross underfunding of public schools

December 3, 2015

The following excerpt from the summary of the 2015 Auditor-General’s report confirms that Ontario’s provincial government has grossly underfunded public school infrastructure in our province for many years:

“An independent assessment calculated that the Ministry of Education needs $1.4 billion a year to maintain schools in a state of good repair. However, actual annual funding in the last five years has ranged from $150 million to $500 million.”

The $1.4 billion per year that is needed is for maintenance intended to KEEP buildings in good repair; and does not include the funding required to address the $15-billion of outstanding repairs that have been allowed to accumulate under provincial watch and funding for the past two decades.

If only some of the $37-billion that Ontarians have overpaid for electricity since 2006 has gone to repairing and rebuilding Ontario’s public schools, 2-million children would be attending schools that are in much better shape!