Ontario to spend $784M this year on building and renovating schools

Ontario will spend $784 TORONTO million this year to build or renovate 79 schools across the province, but opposition critics say it’s not enough to address a growing multibillion-dollar repair backlog.

Education Minister Mitzie Hunter said the funding announced Monday will support construction of 39 schools, and additions and renovations to 40 additional facilities. The work will include development of childcare centres in the schools, with plans to create 2,700 new childcare spaces.

“Ontario is committed to building learning environments that support student achievement and well-being,” Hunter said in a statement. “That’s why we continue to invest in new, renovated, and expanded schools so that every student can learn and grow in a space that enables them to reach their full potential.”

The government said the announcement comes in addition to a funding commitment made by the province last year to spend $1.4 billion on school repairs.

Ontario has a repair backlog worth about $15 billion at its 4,900 publicly funded schools.

Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown said the funding announced Monday doesn’t go far enough to address the accumulated repair backlog and that students are learning in substandard conditions in some cases.

“I’ve toured schools where there is asbestos in the walls, doors and windows that won’t close, and boilers that break down,” Brown said in a statement. “It’s a bit late now, before an election, for the Liberals to make a promise that should have been made years ago. Students deserve better.”

New Democrat education critic Peggy Sattler also said the funding wasn’t adequate.

“The government has not been making those ongoing annual investments that are required to chip away at some of the deterioration that has occurred in our educational infrastructure across the province,” she said, characterizing the cash as a repackaged commitment from the 2017 budget.

Sattler said the way the province funds schools need to be rebuilt. Currently, the funding formula doesn’t accurately project the maintenance and repair needs of schools, she said.

In November, the Toronto District School Board estimated that its repair backlog — which sat at $3.7 billion in 2017, up $200,000 from 2016 — represents nearly a quarter of the entire backlog for the province.

“Additional provincial funding and a new funding strategy with new sources of revenue is needed,” board chairwoman Robin Pilkey said at the time.

Sattler was also critical of the childcare component of Monday ’s announcement, saying the government needs to do more to address affordability for parents.

“The spaces aren’t going to help all these families who are going to have to pay the equivalent of a second mortgage every month to put their child in childcare,” she said.

The province has previously announced it will spend $1.6 billion over the next five years to create 45,000 new licensed childcare spaces in schools and other public spaces.

It’s a bit late now, before an election, for the Liberals to make a promise that should have been made years ago.