TORONTO, July 09, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- With no fanfare or public announcement the newly minted Ministry of Education sent out memos to school boards across the province letting them know that, as a result of the cancellation of the Provincial Cap and Trade program, the 2018 Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funding (GGRF) funding has been cancelled effective July 3, 2018. This represents $100-million out of the $1.4-billion total amount of provincial funding provided to school boards via School Renewal Allocation and School Condition Improvement funding. 

The Ministry did outline that any GGRF work that was under contract prior to this date will be honoured, but that future work will have to be funded out of existing funding sources such as renewal (SRA) or Improvement (SCI) funding. Each school board will be at a different stage of spending their portion of the $100-million so the exact impact for this budget year has yet to be determined.

Industry standards suggest that $1.4-billion/year for school repairs is the absolute minimum required for routine maintenance and repairs in Ontario’s schools and the Auditor-General agrees. A reduction of $100-million per year brings this down to $1.3-billion per year. 

Unless Doug Ford’s government plans to allocate an additional $100-million in SRA or SCI funding in the next budget cycle, to make up for this amount that will be lost in annual school repair funding with this recent announcement, this new government will have effectively cut annual provincial funding for school repairs by over 7% in the blink of an eye. 

Schools are critical infrastructure in this province and Ontario’s 2-million students deserve safe, healthy, well-maintained schools in which to learn each day. We must hold our new provincial government accountable to providing exactly that.

Press contacts: Stephen Seaborn 416 737 2980   Krista Wylie 416 762 1335

“The fact that 58 of the newly elected MPPs signed the Fix Our Schools Pledge clearly shows that that school conditions are an important issue. We cannot allow 200 million children in Ontario to attend school in buildings that have generally unsafe conditions anymore.”  – Krista Wylie, Co-Founder, Fix Our Schools

“We need a province-wide Standard of Good Repair for schools and adequate, stable annual provincial funding for school boards to meet those standards. - Stephen Seaborn, Campaign for Public Education

fixourschools.ca, founded in 2014, is a non-partisan, parent-led, province-wide campaign working to ensure that every publicly funded school in Ontario is a safe, healthy, well-maintained building that provides an environment conducive to learning and working. 

campaignforpubliceducation.ca was founded in 2002 to coordinate efforts of parent, teacher, education worker and ethno-racial organizations in campaigning for needs-based funding for public education.