Ontario school boards will have up to $1.6 billion to spend on COVID-19 costs for the next school year

Thestar.com
May 5, 2021

The Ontario government says school boards will have up to $1.6 billion to help with COVID costs for the coming school year, including money from board reserves. But while providing details about the fall, Education Minister Stephen Lecce couldn’t say if kids would return for in-person classes before the end of June.

Lecce said the advice from the province’s chief medical officer of health, who recommended shutting down all schools to in-person learning mid-April, “has not changed at this point” so they remain closed for now as the province remains under a stay-at-home order.

However, Lecce added, “we have a responsibility to plan ahead for September. We’ve been doing that for months.”

The province has also confirmed that online learning will remain an option for all families for the entire 2021-22 school year because “parents want that choice in September. We’re unsure when this pandemic will take us … (and) the lesson is to be ready for any circumstance.”

After initially telling boards to budget for the fall assuming no extra pandemic funds, the province announced that it will provide additional money, and also allow them to again dip into their reserves for the 2021-22 school year.

The funding includes $383.6 million for temporary extra staffing; $55 million for internet connectivity and new devices; $450 million for personal protective equipment for staff and students; $86 million to keep additional public health nurses working with schools on COVID-19 efforts; and it will also allow boards to access up to $508 million of their reserve funds.

Money has also been set aside for transportation, student mental health and $85.5 million to address learning gaps during the pandemic, including summer school and early reading supports.

The ministry has, however, said that boards should only plan to spend half of the COVID resources for now, and wait and see what the situation is like for the second half of the school year before allocating the remaining funds.

NDP education critic Marit Stiles said Lecce’s announcement lacked “clarity ... about what the future looks like for children in terms of returning to school. We didn’t hear anything about that. What we heard instead was a lot about lots of other things, including online learning.

“… The vast majority of families want schools to be made safe, so kids can go back to safe, small classrooms. They need to be with their friends, their teachers, their peers. We should be looking at bold action to support our children.”

She said she had hoped for an “ambitious plan for how to do learning recovery for our kids” who have struggled during the pandemic, which “will be almost two years of disruption in our children’s learning.”

Liz Stuart, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, said the funding “does not keep pace” with boards’ actual costs and “while Minister Lecce trumpets ‘additional funding’ to respond to COVID-19, it should not be lost on anyone that he is providing the same inadequate amount as last year.”

The province’s operational funding for boards, called Grants for Student Needs -- which does not include the COVID announcement -- is about $25.6 billion for the coming year, with an overall increase of $561 million from the current year.

That works out to a per-pupil amount of $12,686, up from this year’s $12,525.

The Ontario Public School Boards’ Association is “is pleased that the government will continue to provide funding for many pandemic-related items, including personal protective equipment, public health nurses, and renewal of technology and devices,” said president Cathy Abraham.

However, she added, “school boards are now making decisions for the 2021-22 school year, which include both in-school and remote learning and they need to continue to be part of the discussion about return-to-school planning.”

The province is also urging boards to keep up cohorting of students in the fall to limit contacts, and have high school students learn in “quadmesters,” which means they still earn eight credits a year, but take two at a time.