Tag Archives: Ventilation

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.

Ford Government Continues to Grossly Underfund Schools

March 4, 2021

With the ongoing COVID-pandemic and the new variants emerging regularly, ventilation and air quality in classrooms and schools continue to be a hot topic, as they have been since August.

Fix Our Schools sees this new interest in topics such as ventilation and air quality as a silver lining of the COVID pandemic. We have been urging the Ontario government to go beyond simply acknowledging ventilation and air quality as priorities and start providing the levels of funding that would enable local school boards to invest in making substantive improvements. These investments in improving ventilation and air quality would provide benefits immediately amidst the pandemic reality – but also for the long-term health of students and staff who spend their days in schools. 

In response to a recent study that showed carbon dioxide levels at several Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) buildings regularly exceeded limits, TCDSB Trustee  Norm Di Pasquale said the province could do more to address the air quality in TCDSB schools. He mentioned the need for additional provincial funding to purchase air purifiers for the 1/3 of TCDSB classrooms currently without air purifiers. He also mentioned that addressing the ventilation concerns revealed in just one TCDSB school would cost up to $600,000.

Let’s contrast this identified funding need with what our provincial government has actually provided to school boards to improve ventilation, air quality, and HVAC systems amidst the pandemic:

  1. In mid-August 2020, the Ford government announced $50 million for “improved ventilation, air quality and HVAC system effectiveness in schools.” This equated to roughly $10,000 per school in the province, and was allocated between school boards as per this memo from the Ministry of Education. 
  2. In late-August 2020, the first tranche of the federal Safe Return to School funding was announced, including $100 million for “health and safety components of school reopening plans,” which included “the hiring of custodians, HVAC improvements, internet connectivity for students and other local needs.” It is unclear how much of this $100 million in funding actually went to HVAC improvements.
  3. On February 1, 2021, the provincial government announced $50 million specifically for “portable HEPA filters and other immediate options to optimize air quality and ventilation in schools.” 

So, even if half of the federal Safe Return to School funding went to HVAC improvements, the total funding provided to school boards to address air quality, ventilation, and HVAC systems in all of Ontario’s publicly funded schools is only $150 million.  So, the total funding provided for all Ontario schools to address ventilation, HVAC, and air quality issues is one-quarter of the $600,000 estimate to address the ventilation issues at one TCDSB school.

Hmmmm… this doesn’t sound like a provincial government that is taking the necessary steps to invest in school infrastructure – does it? However, successive provincial governments in this province have grossly and chronically underfunded school renewal and repairs for well over twenty years, such that going into the pandemic, Ontario schools had a total of $16.3 billion of disrepair. So, maybe the Ford government is simply continuing a long-standing tradition of underfunding the buildings where 2-million children spend their days? Fix Our Schools hopes that a lesson learned from the COVID pandemic is that you cannot chronically and grossly underfund infrastructure and systems, and then expect them to be there for society when an emergency (like a global pandemic!) hits. 

How Long Will Ford Delay Investing in Ontario Schools?

February 23, 2021

As many students across Ontario have returned to in-person classes in recent weeks, Fix Our Schools wonders why our provincial government has fought against making decisions that would positively impact school children amidst the COVID pandemic, and in the long term.  Since our provincial government is the sole funder of schools and education in our province,  the only answer Fix Our Schools could surmise is that the Ford government would rather emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic with money in its coffers rather than having invested in our schools and education system.  

In September, the Dufferin Peel Catholic School Board (DPCSB) wrote this letter to the Province, explaining that their school building ventilation needs alone would cost $60 million, whereas, at that point, the provincial government had only allocated $50-M for all school boards to improve ventilation. In this letter, the Chair of the DPCSB wrote, “we are cognizant that some classrooms, especially those located in school basements, do not have any windows.”

If you wonder why on earth children are learning in basement classrooms with no windows, consider the shocking lack of schools being built in the province.  In 2017, economist Hugh Mackenzie identified that, according to the government’s own data, Ontario needed  346 new schools built.

Instead of taking steps to build these much-needed new schools, the Ford government, which ran on a platform of “increasing local infrastructure funding”, instantly halted all processes in place to move new school buildings forward. This delay meant that for years, no new school buildings were approved and we are now years behind. In the opinion of Fix Our Schools, as long as children and teachers spend their days learning and working in windowless rooms, our government is failing us.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us the mistake of not investing in school infrastructure. If you believe that schools ought to be safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working, then we must pressure the provincial government to start investing in schools and education now.  

Is Premier Ford “Doing the Best He Can” Amidst Challenging Circumstances?

January 19, 2021

Fix Our Schools has been hearing on social media some version of the following question over the past few weeks:

“What do you expect Premier Ford to do? I think he’s doing the best he can in this difficult situation.”

So we thought now was as good a time as any to give a full and complete response to that question …

Please keep in mind that Fix Our Schools’ focus is on ensuring schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working, so what we expect of the Ford government focuses only on that aspect of education, leaving far more calls to action unwritten here. 

Our Pre-Pandemic Expectations of Premier Ford:

To answer the question fully, it seemed necessary to go back to the beginning. Since the Ford government took power in June 2018, Fix Our Schools has taken advantage of the annual budget consultation process to submit our expectations on what the Ford government should do to ensure Ontario’s schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working. Some expectations that we have consistently outlined in these submissions include:

  • Developing a standard of good repair for Ontario’s schools
  • Providing adequate, stable funding to eliminate the $16.3-billion of disrepair in Ontario’s schools
  • Resuming transparency into the disrepair in Ontario’s schools

We made these recommendations in January 2019 and submitted these recommendations in January 2020, and in each of these years also made presentations to the Committee of Economic Affairs and Finance as part of the budget consultation process.

Since 2018, our unwritten expectation of Premier Ford was that he would cultivate a government culture that authentically engaged with, actively listened to, and humbly learned from key stakeholders, in order to develop the best decisions and policy in the face of complex challenges. Our experience has, in fact, been quite the opposite. In stark contrast to the Liberal government who held power before Ford took over, and also in stark contrast to the PC Education Critic and Leader at Queen’s Park at that time, the Ford government has chosen not to actively engage with, listen to, or learn from stakeholders in any meaningful way. Prior to Ford becoming Premier, Fix Our Schools had true working relationships with the NDP Education Critic and Leader, the PC Education Critic and Leader, the Minister of Education, their political staff and the Ontario public servants in that Ministry, and, most notably, as a parent-led, non-partisan, Ontario-wide campaign, we had direct contact and many productive meetings with senior-level policy advisors within the Premiers’ Office. Those working relationships lead to some excellent progress, including significant increases in provincial funding for school repairs increase from $150-M/year to $1.4-B/year and transparency into the disrepair data in schools. Our experience with the Ford administration is that the culture established there is not one of learning or growth, so they seem destined to fall short when leading amidst the extreme complexity and pressure of a global pandemic.

As our input to the 2021/22 provincial budget, Fix Our Schools sent this submission to the Ministry of Education, and continues to call for stable, adequate, equitable funding for schools; a standard of good repair for all Ontario schools, including First Nations schools (which are funded with federal money) and portables. In this funding submission, we also included funding recommendations for the current pandemic environment, and looked ahead to 2025, when all public buildings are meant to be fully accessible for people with disabilities, and made recommendations to this government to provide funding to school boards to address accessibility within their buildings.

Our Expectations of Premier Ford Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic:

On June 11, 2020, Fix Our Schools sent these expectations to the Ministry of Education, in response to its request for public input to Ontario’s plan to reopen schools. Days later, we learned that an advisory group led by The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) had been working closely with the Ministry of Education.  SickKids issued its initial recommendations for safe school reopenings in the document, COVID-19: Recommendations for School Reopening (pdf), highlighting the need for:

  • the ability for children to maintain 2M distance from one another in classrooms
  • proper ventilation in classrooms
  • proper hand-washing facilities for all students

Given Fix Our Schools initial recommendations, and SickKids initial and subsequent recommendations, Fix Our Schools would have expected Premier Ford to have done the following, all of which are within his governments’ power: 

  • Released new emergency repairs funding to school boards so that they could have taken advantage of the fact that school buildings were empty for weeks and months at a time, and could have conducted outstanding repairs in these buildings more safely and more efficiently. 
  • Funded a return to school plan that would have allowed for sufficient space for students to maintain the recommended 2 m distance from others, like many other countries
  • Responded quickly to the June 17 Sick Kids report calling for proper ventilation in all classrooms, by immediately releasing funding to school boards to have been able to address ventilation issues, rather than waiting to release only $50-M in late August – weeks before schools were opening.
  • Provided funding required to ensure all Ontario students could have easy access to proper hand-washing in schools.
  • Advocated for Ontario’s First Nations schools, even though these are federally funded
  • Provided funding to replenish the technology that, understandably, was taken from schools back in the Spring to ensure all students had resources to participate in at-home learning, accommodate on-line learning. As it stands now, most schools have a dearth of technology available for in-school learning.
  • Developed a provincial outdoor education plan, acknowledging that being outdoors offers the most protection against COVID-19 transmission.
  • Consulted with educators and other education stakeholders to understand how government policies would actually unfold in real classrooms, in real schools, rather than relying on teachers, principals and education workers to work miracles.
  • Hired additional caretakers.

We, at Fix Our Schools, hope that this provides some insight into all that could have been done by Premier Ford since taking office in June 2018 to lead us to a much better place than we find ourselves in today. This January 7, 2021 Ottawa Citizen article provides some additional recommendations on ways Premier Ford and his government could make schools safer.

Individual vs. Collective Investment in Schools and Education: What is Needed Now from the Ford Government?

January 12, 2021

Since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered Ontario’s schools in mid-March 2020, the Ford government has offered financial support to individual families to offset the costs of supporting their children’s learning amidst the pandemic.

  • Between April 6 and August 31, 2020, families could apply for a program called “Support for Families”, which would provide a one-time payment, per child, of $200 for children aged 0 to 12 and $250 for children or youth aged 0 to 21 with special needs. As per the Ministry of Education website, “this funding was offered to help parents with the costs of work books, educational apps, educational subscription services, movies and other tools to support learning at home”
  • On November 5, the Ford government released its annual budget, and announced it would extend an additional one-time payment to families of $200 for children aged 0 to 12 and $250 for children or youth aged 0 to 21 with special needs. “This funding was offered to help families access workbooks, school supplies, and technology to help their child’s learning this year”. The initial deadline to apply through the Get Support for Learners government webpage was originally January 15, 2021 but this deadline has been extended to February 8, 2021.

According to the November 5, 2020 CTV News report entitled, “Ontario parents will get another $200 payout to help with education costs”, the Ford government will spend $380-million on the second round of payments, on top of the $378-million for the first batch of payments. Rod Phillips, Finance Minister for the Ford government at the time, said this was “money well spent.”

On December 22, the Ford government announced that it would extend the same $200/student payment for students aged 13-through until Grade 12. Using 2016 Census Data for Ontario, Fix Our Schools estimates approximately 1-million students fall in this age range, meaning an estimated additional $200-million of government spending on this benefit. The application process for families to apply through the Get Support for Learners government webpage for children aged 13-18 opens January 11, 2021 and closes February 8, 2021.

The direct payments listed above are available to families of students who attend public schools, private schools, First Nations operated or federally operated schools, or are homeschooled. In total, they could equate to up to $958-million ($380-million + $378-million + $200-million) in government support directly to families for education amidst the COVID -pandemic.

Some would approve of the approach that the Ford government has used here – getting money directly into the hands of parents and guardians as quickly as possible, with as little red tape as possible. And there are certainly economic arguments for taking this approach.

However, others would vehemently disapprove of this approach, citing equity concerns such as:

  • Will the families who need support the most even apply to receive this payment due to awareness, access to technology, and time to apply?
  • Will the direct payment amount provided yield any real benefit for the education of children in this most challenging of times, when compared to benefits that may be yielded if this $958-million of provincial funding had been invested collectively in schools and education?

The Fix Our Schools campaign has always focused on ensuring that publicly funded schools in Ontario are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning. The only mechanism within the current provincial funding formula to achieve this goal is for our provincial government to invest collectively in Ontario’s 5,000 schools. So why on earth, when we all knew back in the spring that ventilation in classrooms was key to safety, did the Ford government only invest $50-million in improving school ventilation?

We also question why the Ford government has done nothing to invest in ensuring that elementary students have the space in classrooms required to properly physical distance, knowing early on in the pandemic that this is a key success factor? Furthermore, we question why the Ford government has only invested $15-M collectively in technology for schools amidst this pandemic? Minister Lecce made an announcement on Saturday, January 9th, and shockingly, to quote NDP Education critic Marit Stiles and NDP Childcare critic Doly Begum:

“It’s desperately frustrating for parents that Stephen Lecce got in front of the cameras, and didn’t announce a single measure to make schools safe to re-open. This government doesn’t want to invest in schools, and that’s putting our kids’ health and their education at risk.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the fact that school infrastructure in this province has been chronically and grossly underfunded by successive provincial governments (and federal governments in the case of First Nations schools). Prior to the pandemic, there was $16.3-billion of disrepair in Ontario’s publicly funded buildings. A society cannot ignore infrastructure for decades and then expect that infrastructure to be resilient and safe amidst a pandemic. Knowing that the only source of funding for school infrastructure is government funding, Fix Our Schools believes that more collective investment by the Ford government is desperately needed – to address ventilation issues in classrooms, to ensure students have enough space in classrooms to properly distance, to buy the technology that school boards need to ensure all students have what they require to learn to name but a few collective investments. If you share our concerns and want the Ford government to take immediate steps to make the investments required to get all Ontario students back to in-class learning in schools, then please take one minute to send this letter to Premier Ford and your local MPP.

However, we also acknowledge that many families may benefit greatly from the direct payments from the Ford government, so if your family will benefit from the direct payments being offered by the Ford government to help with student learning, please ensure you apply before February 8, 2021 by visiting the Get Support for Learners government webpage. If your family circumstances are such that this direct government payment is not really needed, perhaps consider applying for it, regardless, and then donating the money? An idea to consider. 

Fix Our Schools shares the frustration of opposition parties with the Ford government’s lack of investment and lack of action to date to ensure students could be safe to learn in-person, clearly the best option for all students.

Fix Our Schools feels deep frustration on behalf of the children, teachers, principals, education workers, families, and school boards who have been and continue to be subject to the half-measures and lack of investment and action by our provincial government. Back in late August, Premier Ford said, “We’re really relying on school boards. I just told them I have all the confidence in the world that they’re going to be able to get through this and make sure that the students and the staff are in a very safe environment”. Premier Ford – you cannot continue to underfund schools and education, and then pass the buck to others to work miracles. Fix Our Schools believes that additional collective investment in schools and education is the only way forward, even though this investment would be coming much later than it ought to have been delivered. What do you think?

Onwards and Upwards But First …

January 5, 2021

Fix Our Schools was founded in 2014 with the goal of ensuring all of Ontario’s publicly funded schools were safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provided environments conducive to learning and working.  With some notable successes along the way, we continue to work towards this goal as we head into 2021. But first, a necessary reflection on the past year and on how Ontario’s provincial government handled school infrastructure in this unprecedented year.

Ontario’s school buildings began 2020 with at least a $16.3-billion repair backlog. While this number is staggering, it notably does not even include First Nations schools, portables, accessibility retrofits, water quality, air quality, or asbestos abatement.

Throughout a year like no other, Ontario’s school boards continued to be at the mercy of provincial funding and policies. While the Ford government maintained annual funding for school renewal and repairs at $1.4-billion/year, this level of funding has been shown to be grossly inadequate since disrepair in Ontario’s schools has continued to increase every year.

In fact, when the Ford government released its budget in November 2020, political economist Ricardo Tranjan declared it to be “really bad for Ontario education”.

https://twitter.com/ricardo_tranjan/status/1324491092147011584?s=20

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ford government actually shirked its responsibility to provide adequate, stable funding for schools and education when it ‘allowed’ school boards to dip into their own reserve funds to try to fund what was actually needed to ensure schools were safe, healthy environments.

Throughout 2020, the Ford government continued to drag its heels on new school builds and expansions across the province, leaving us almost 2 years behind in this process. 

When schools were shuttered in late March 2020 and left empty for months, the Ford government missed the opportunity to invest in school repairs and improvements, such as accessibility retrofits, that could have been done much more safely without students in these buildings. Even for repair and renewal projects that were particularly relevant amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, such as those focused on improving ventilation in schools, the Ford government dragged its heels in allocating any funding to school boards to take action on improvements. 

At the same time that Ontario’s provincial government was unable to take the necessary action to invest in school infrastructure that would provide safe, healthy environments for learning and working, especially amidst a pandemic, our federal government was doing very little to ensure First Nations schools were safe. Many of Ontario’s First Nations schools still do not even have clean drinking water, let alone the type of infrastructure that would be safe and healthy during a pandemic.

https://twitter.com/cbcreporter/status/1298973279923793920?s=20https://twitter.com/cbcreporter/status/1298973279923793920?s=20

The Ford government also failed to make needed changes to an outdated regulation guiding the eligibility for and use of Education Development Charges, so developers continued to get away without contributing to school infrastructure, from which they profit.

Our provincial government chose to ignore an opportunity to fund any outdoor education plans, which could have been a helpful component of a safe return to school in September. 

And, since taking office in June 2018, the Ford government has refused to publish updated disrepair data for Ontario’s 5,000 schools. This data is collected with taxpayer dollars, and citizens deserve transparency into the state of school buildings. 

Looking back on 2020, we realize a “silver lining” of the global pandemic relative to schools is that substantively more attention has been paid to the condition of school buildings. Ventilation, drinking water, and air quality may not be sexy topics, but Canadians now appreciate their importance. Media coverage of the state of school buildings was intense in 2020. With the ardent support of Fix Our School followers, we helped to keep a full conversation about safe, well-maintained schools in the press.

With your ongoing support, we intend to continue our work towards ensuring Ontario schools are safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings for all students and teachers. Onwards and upwards to 2021.

Year in Review: Fix Our Schools In the News

December 17, 2020

When 2020 dawned, never did Fix Our Schools think that ventilation in schools would be one of the most popular topics in education, and yet, here we are heading towards 2021 and that is exactly what happened. The COVID-19 pandemic has confirmed what Fix Our Schools has been advocating for since 2014 – publicly funded schools must be safe, healthy, well-maintained buildings that provide environments conducive to learning and working. Never before have so many people agreed that school buildings are critical infrastructure that must be funded accordingly.

Here we present to you our year in review: Fix Our Schools In the News

 

The Silver Lining: More Fresh Air in Classrooms

December 8, 2020

In this COVID-pandemic, science tells us that being outdoors is the safest place and, when students, teachers, and education workers need to be inside classrooms, the next best thing is lots of fresh air. In the June 2020 SickKids entitled, “COVID-19: Recommendations for School Reopening”,  proper ventilation was cited as an important element of a safe return to school.

“Adequately ventilated classroom environments (e.g. open windows with air flow, and improved airflow through ventilation systems) are expected to be associated with less likelihood of transmission compared with poorly ventilated settings.”

By early August 2020, the Public Health Agency of Canada had issued its own guidelines for safe school reopenings, which also clearly outlined the importance of good ventilation. It called upon schools to increase ventilation by opening windows when possible, and increasing air exchanges by adjusting HVAC systems. 

Prior to the pandemic, $16.3-billion of disrepair existed in Ontario’s publicly funded schools. Across the province, there were (and are!) classrooms with no windows, windows that do not open at all or that only open a tiny bit, and some older schools and portables without HVAC systems to bring in fresh air from outside. Add to this reality, the lack of provincial funding – the only source of funding for schools and education in Ontario – and one can appreciate the challenging position in which Ontario’s school boards found themselves over the summer. In fact, only in late August did Ontario’s Education Minister Lecce announce a mere $50-million in provincial funding for school boards to use to improve ventilation in schools to prevent transmission of COVID-19.

Ontario’s school boards took health advice about improving ventilation very seriously. Knowing that they would be held accountable if ventilation was not improved in their schools by September, they began work well before the provincial government had made a commitment to fund this required work.  The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) clearly and transparently shares the steps taken to ensure proper ventilation in its classrooms, even including specific reports on each school. The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) also worked over the summer to review and improve ventilation and increase the volume of fresh air. The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) was also inspecting schools and ventilation systems over the summer to ensure they’re functioning as designed, and making repairs as required. The Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) even went so far over the summer as to modify vertical sliding windows, as needed, to increase the opening from 4 inches to 12 inches, acknowledging the important role of natural ventilation provided through opening windows.

Fast forward to September 2020. Many of Ontario’s students did return to classrooms. However, a significant percentage of families (particularly in areas hardest hit by COVID) opted for at-home learning, feeling that amidst high community spread – a return to in-class learning was simply not a safe or healthy choice. Despite the inevitable COVID cases that have emerged in Ontario’s schools since September, in-class learning has been able to continue. Amidst the second wave, and heading into colder months, ventilation continues to be a critical component of limiting transmission of COVID in classrooms.

Toronto Public Health issued a revised COVID Fact Sheet in early November, which is being used by both the TDSB and the Toronto Catholic Board (TCDSB) to inform their COVID protocols, including those related to ventilation. The TDSB has been extremely transparent about its assessments of all classrooms to determine whether they benefited from mechanical ventilation, or would be receiving a HEPA Unit to provide a degree of mechanical ventilation to augment natural ventilation in that classroom.

The TDSB also recently sent the following email to all families, emphasizing the importance of ventilation through both mechanical and natural means in the coming months:

“Dear Parents and Guardians,

The TDSB continues to do everything we can to help slow the spread of COVID-19. Daily self-assessments, regular hand washing, mask-wearing, and physical distancing are some of the most important things we can do. In addition, according to Toronto Public Health, increasing fresh air is an important strategy in our schools and classrooms.

Over the past few months, the TDSB has checked all mechanical HVAC systems to ensure they are operating as designed, increased the frequency of filter changes, adjusted systems to increase the amount of fresh air and reduce recirculation, added portable HEPA air filter units in classrooms where mechanical ventilation is not an option, and opened windows where possible.

As we head into the colder months of the year, open windows will continue to be an important step to increase fresh air in classrooms and schools. Toronto Public Health is recommending that windows in classrooms should be opened for a period of time, at different points of the day to introduce fresh air into the space and increase airflow. While heating systems will be turned up, we still expect that schools will be cooler than normal.

We recognize it is very much a balance between introducing more ventilation at various times during the day and maintaining a comfortable indoor air temperature in classrooms. Please keep this in mind as your child gets ready for school each day by considering an extra layer of clothing to ensure comfort throughout the day.”

Looking outside of Canada, Fix Our Schools noted that the German Environment Agency (UBA) has provided a detailed instruction manual for ventilation in schools, recommending that classrooms ought to be aired regularly every 20 minutes for about 5 minutes with the windows wide open, which ensures the air is completely swapped for fresh air from outside three times an hour. In fact, the practice of opening windows for fresh air for several minutes, known as Lüftung in German, is something of a national obsession in the country.

Experts in indoor air quality such as Jeffrey Siegel, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto, note that ensuring good indoor air quality can help reduce the transmission of COVID-19. He also notes that even once we move past this global pandemic, “there is overwhelming evidence that addressing ventilation in schools improves academic performance, decreases absenteeism, and reduces asthma. When you total up all the economic benefits, it’s an economic no-brainer.”

With all of this in mind, Fix Our Schools suggests that Ontario’s students, teachers, and education workers would be well-served by a concerted effort to optimize indoor air quality through a combination of mechanical and natural ventilation. We would also suggest that without a provincially funded program in place to test classroom air quality regularly, we will never know for certain the quality of indoor air in our classrooms.

 

Let’s Look to Science and Industry Best Practices to Ensure Schools are Safe

October 6, 2020

Today, we are grateful to have Douglas Green, Founder/President of GROK Energy Services, as our guest blogger. Please see his complete bio at the end of this blog post.

Managing Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) is an Art and a Science

Building Science is complex. Dedicated professionals spend many years developing their skills and expertise in this field, and they should be consulted when it comes to maintaining and upgrading school buildings. The important things being managed are very difficult to ‘measure’ with normal human senses. These include:

  • Energy Use
  • Air Quality
  • Temperature
  • Humidity
  • Noise Levels
  • Lighting
  • Air movement

These are all the elements of indoor environmental quality (IEQ). When it comes to large, complex commercial buildings like schools, it takes a professional with considerable technical training and experience to properly measure and evaluate IEQ characteristics, then effectively correct deficiencies in order to maintain safe, comfortable, and healthy conditions.

The consequences of this critical task being underperformed or ignored are many, and can include:

  • Short and long-term negative impacts on occupant health
  • Increased risk of disease transmission
  • Reduced productivity
  • Occupant discomfort
  • Higher rates of staff turnover
  • Absenteeism;
  • Reduced asset lifespans;
  • Increased operating costs
  • Structural damage or deterioration

Unfortunately, this is the point we, as a society, have reached with our public schools when it comes to operating and maintaining school facilities. To varying degrees, many of the above consequences are the day-to-day reality in most of our public schools, because the buildings simply have not been properly looked after, over a very long period of time.

A Critical Knowledge Gap Has Allowed IEQ in Schools to Deteriorate

For over two decades in Ontario, School Boards have been responsible for maintaining school buildings and safe, healthy IEQ (and all the ‘invisible’ elements that are part of that), while our provincial government has been responsible for providing the funding required to carry out this responsibility. In Ontario, provincial funding has been far less than required over this time and has resulted in a $16.3-billion repair backlog across Ontario schools. This model has also meant that frequently, local School Boards may not have the expertise required for every aspect of the details of maintaining school buildings, and safe, healthy IEQ. I am not suggesting that school boards do not have maintenance and engineering departments (they certainly do). However, there is sometimes a critical knowledge gap.

HVAC systems in buildings tend to be ‘out-of-sight and out-of-mind’, and thus easily ignored by those who do not fully understand the importance of good IEQ to occupant health, productivity, and safety. The negative impacts of this neglect can also be hard to quantify, sometimes taking years to become apparent. This contributes to the ease of dismissing industry-standard Operations & Maintenance recommendations. Chronic provincial underfunding, lengthy ‘lowest bidder’ tendering processes, and constantly ‘deferred’ tasks have allowed substantial deterioration to progress.

Focusing on the Long-term Goal of Healthier Buildings

As with many things in life, HVAC systems will appear to be ‘working fine’, until they aren’t. When an HVAC system fails, a building tends to get pretty uncomfortable, pretty quickly. Understandably, rapid response and repair is suddenly an urgent priority. Other, less sudden deficiencies like high energy consumption, ‘stuffiness’ in parts of the buildings, growing absenteeism, or declining asset lifespan, tend not to get as much urgent attention. And yet, these factors can cost a lot more money and cause a lot more harm in the long run.

Sometimes an unexpected change can finally shine a spotlight on something that has been neglected for a long time. When it comes to our school buildings, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic is just such a change. It is now recognized by the health and scientific communities that a significant vector for infection by this potentially deadly pathogen is via airborne transmission in crowded indoor spaces. This fact has suddenly escalated the importance of having excellent IEQ in all buildings. Unfortunately, this is not quickly or easily achieved in many school buildings, after decades of neglected maintenance, upgrades, and replacements.

Meeting the Challenges of HVAC Upgrade and Repair 

HVAC ducts and plumbing often run behind walls, and above ceilings, with major mechanical components often located in basements or on rooftops. Accessing many of the components of a large HVAC system in a commercial or industrial building for maintenance, upgrades, or replacement, is often a very invasive task. It is likely to involve opening up walls or ceilings, which in many older schools also means disturbing asbestos in the structures.

This is not something that can be done while the building is occupied and operational, on an ‘expedited’ basis. This is something that needs to be scheduled and completed while following industry-standard recommendations, at a cost that is easily determined and budgeted for well in advance.

Yet, it is precisely these types of tasks that have seen their budgets reduced or eliminated over the last several decades in our school buildings. These decisions have been made by people within the provincial government who simply do not understand these dynamics, because they lack the knowledge, or were not willing to follow guidance provided by subject matter experts.

In terms of dedicating budget to maintaining HVAC infrastructure, commercial buildings tend to fare better than schools, because the dynamics are very different. Unlike public school buildings, the management of commercial buildings tends to be handled by professionals with appropriate skills, knowledge, and experience who operate in a non-politicized, non-partisan manner. Commercial building owners are motivated by tenant retention and steady increases in net operating income – both of which increase asset value – so proper maintenance over time produces a positive financial return. While proper maintenance of school buildings produces the same results, Ontario’s provincial government has tended to avoid these costs, since there is no perceived ‘reasonable return on investment’.

Adapting our school buildings to help achieve resilience and recovery from COVID-19 is not going to be easy, but it is not impossible. Some changes may need to wait until buildings are unoccupied, but many other less disruptive things can be done immediately to improve IEQ in schools, such as:

  • Evaluate ventilation systems to ensure correct operation and maximum outside air-flow
  • Ensure adequate air movement in all indoor spaces
  • Upgrade filtration where possible to MERV 13 or higher
  • Install air sterilization technology;
  • Review any existing air quality issues, and ensure resolution;
  • Review control sequences to verify systems are operating to maximize indoor air quality, set to flush indoor air before and after occupation;
  • Refer to “ASHRAE Reopening Schools and Universities C19 Guidance” for more detail

These steps can help improve IEQ and mitigate against potential localized accumulations of infected bioaerosols. [Note: Bioaerosols are small droplets suspended in the air, which is the specific condition that could result in COVID-19 transmission. Surface transmission is generally being well addressed already through enhanced cleaning regimes].

One of the biggest challenges is simply the number of schools needing immediate attention, compared to the number of Building Science professionals. Another reason why completing this work over time, on a scheduled maintenance basis, is the preferred approach.

Steps Forward to Making Classrooms Safer

Moving forward, it would be ideal to separate budgets for school building operations and maintenance, from the actual delivery of education within the school buildings. School buildings are public infrastructure assets, no different from highways and bridges. As such, they should be maintained so they function properly, last the expected lifetime, and provide a safe, healthy, and comfortable place for students and teachers.

Perhaps one way to accomplish this would be to place the Operations & Maintenance activities of school building infrastructure under federal jurisdiction to ensure a standard of good repair for all publicly funded schools in Canada, and to ensure stable, adequate funding required to ensure these standards are met. These separate activities with separate budgets, could each be managed by professionals with the right credentials. I am sure that educators and school boards be happy to be absolved of the responsibilities of school infrastructure so they can focus on what they do best – educating people. Operating and maintaining school buildings should not be a political activity, left to the whims of political election cycles. Instead, it should be funded properly and be left to HVAC and Building Science professionals so we can do what we do best – delivering the lowest operating costs and best IEQ dynamics, resulting in the most comfortable, productive, healthy, and safe spaces.

Author: Douglas Green, CEM, CMVP

Bio: Doug is a Certified Energy Manager (CEM) and Certified Measurement and Verification Professional (CMVP) accredited by the Association of Energy Engineers with more than a decade of direct experience working in energy management.

Ventilation in Classrooms – Talk to Us!

September 29, 2020

Unsurprisingly, with the majority of Ontario’s 2-million students returning to school in-person, there are COVID-19 cases attributed to schools. In fact, as of September 28, there are 272 COVID cases in Ontario’s public schools. Some professional engineers are already asking questions about the link between schools with a high level of disrepair and susceptibility to COVID-19 outbreaks.

What continues to be a surprise is how Ontario’s Premier and Minister of Education claim that the back-to-school “plan” their government has funded offers every precaution and safeguard possible for a safe return to school. In mid-June, when this government received the SickKids report, they saw that a key recommendation for a safe return to school was good ventilation. And yet, our provincial government waited a full two months before allocating only a fraction of the funding required for school boards to ensure proper ventilation in all Ontario classrooms. This timing clearly left school boards with very little time to conduct the work required. 

By the time the Province had come around to allocating $50-million for ventilation improvements, Fix Our Schools had already heard from dozens of parents, teachers, and education workers from across the province about specific ventilation concerns that we outlined here.

In a nutshell, when a school is old,  the only “ventilation system” available is to open windows. Lamentably, in many old schools across this province, there are classrooms with no windows, there are classrooms with windows that do not open, and in old schools that have had window replacements, there are classrooms with windows that only open a tiny bit – not nearly enough to create any real ventilation. For old Ontario schools with newer windows that, for safety reasons, are only able to be opened a tiny bit, Fix Our Schools was excited to see that some school boards were adopting the inexpensive and relatively quick solution (compared to other ventilation solutions) of re-setting these windows to be able to open more to allow for better ventilation.

For example, we’ve read in the Toronto Catholic School Board TCDSB Reopening Action Plan that, given school ventilation and windows ventilation is the most essential element of any HVAC system, “the Maintenance Department will proceed with modifications of vertical sliding windows as needed to increase the opening from 4 inches to 12 inches. If possible, this modification will be to the window directly opposite the classroom door to further facilitate air circulation.”

We’re interested in hearing from folks from other school boards to hear what your local school board is doing in relation to any new windows in old schools, that may currently be set to only open a few inches? This “fix” is something that could be done in fairly short order and, compared to other solutions, is relatively inexpensive. Fix Our Schools looks forward to hearing from you about what your local schools are doing about this issue! And, if you do not know, we encourage you to ask your local Principal and your local Trustee about this issue. In the opinion of Fix Our Schools, our provincial government has continued to place a low priority on the health, safety, and well-being of Ontario’s students and the adults who work in schools. However, we also encourage local school boards to be doing all they can with the money they have to make publicly funded schools as safe as possible amidst the COVID-pandemic.