$15 billion needed to fix Ontario schools
Newly released ministry data comes after Toronto board revealed its worn-down buildings.

thestar.com
Aug. 26, 2016
By Oliver Sachgau

Ontario’s schools need $15.4 billion in repairs, newly released data from the Ministry of Education shows.

Out of the province’s 4,658 school buildings, 1,666 - over a third - are in poor condition. Another 278 are in critical condition, with the large majority of those, around 200, in the Toronto District School Board.

The information, released on Thursday, marks the first time the province is opening its books on the state of its schools, by revealing each school’s facility condition index - a rating system that assigns a number to each building. The higher the number, the worse the disrepair.

Among the province’s 72 school boards, the Toronto District School Board had the highest average FCI, at 53 per cent. The Lakehead District School Board had the second-highest average, at 45 per cent.

“The release of this data was the result of a commitment I made to ensure transparency and confidence in our public education system by releasing detailed information on the condition of each of Ontario’s schools,” Education Minister Mitzie Hunter said in a statement.

The news comes days after the Toronto board opened its own books on the state of its schools, and the amount of money it needs to repair them. Jesse Ketchum Jr. & Sr. Public School in Yorkville, for example, had an FCI of 121, and was identified as needing eight urgent repairs - including two steam boilers and the hot and cold water pipes - and 44 high-priority ones.

In its release, the TDSB said about 200 schools were in critical condition - a more precise number couldn’t be released because ongoing repairs mean the numbers can change daily.

While the TDSB’s release showed the condition of its schools, the ministry data shows how the school board stacks up against all others in the province. The fact the TDSB is highest in FCI doesn’t surprise Ryan Bird, spokesperson for the TDSB.

“As the largest school board in the country with some of the oldest schools, it’s not surprising that we’re at the top. We have close to 600 schools and a majority of those were built in the ’50s and ’60s,” Bird said.

Bird said the release of the information is important, which is why the TDSB published their portion of the ministry’s FCI numbers earlier this week, along with all the repairs that need to be done.

“While I think parents know there are billions of dollars in repairs that are still needed to the TDSB, it’s hard to imagine that on a local level,” he said.

The TDSB has a roughly $3.4-billion repair backlog.

Krista Wylie, co-founder of the Fix Our Schools campaign, said while the TDSB’s backlog is significant, the province’s numbers show that it’s not the only school board dealing with a repair backlog.

“Beyond the TDSB having the lion’s share at $3.4 billion...that still leaves almost $12 billion in disrepair in school boards outside of the TDSB,” Wylie said.

She thinks the $15.4-billion number is important to stress, as it shows the scale to which school repairs have been neglected.

“The fact that $15.4-billion in disrepair has been allowed to accumulate . . . is shameful,” she said, adding the number isn’t just the responsibility of the current provincial government.

“It’s the voters, it’s every party that’s been at Queen’s Park. It’s a collective issue,” said Wylie.

The province announced $1.1 billion in extra funding back in June that would go to school repairs over the next two years, and Wylie applauded that, as well as the transparency of releasing the FCI data.

“We believe it’s this kind of transparency that will then build the political will for them to fix the problem,” she said. “If people don’t know it’s a problem, they don’t know to ask for it to be fixed at voting time,” she said.