Canadian Review of Social Policy (CRSP) / Revue canadienne de politique sociale (RCSP)

Collins, Stephanie Baker

English

The Challenge of Equity in Canadian Social Welfare Policy

Baines, Donna

Women

Kitchen, Brigitte

Round-Up Tour d'Horizon 
Ontario Brigitte Kitchen 
York University 
Square Feet per Student 
Education Reform in Ontario 
The Ontario government's neo-liberal, commonsensical zeal for amalgamation 
in the name of efficiency drove it to merge the 139 school boards in the province 
into 72, reduce the number of elected trustees from 1,900 to 700 and cap their 
salary a t  $5,000 a year. Now its new student funding formula is threatening 
the closing of as many as 600 neighbourhood and community schools across 
the province, including 138 of them in Toronto. 
When the Education Quality Improvement Act in Bill 160 lowered average 
class size in the province, the government of Ontario had to find a new funding 
formula to avoid having to restore a portion of the $1.5 billion it had cut 
from education spending since coming into office. A consultant was hired to 
analyze the provincial system of capital finance in which the province approved 
and paid for specific building projects requested by school boards. A Pupil 
Accommodation Review Committee, made up of personnel from the Ministry 
of Education and school boards, was given the task of finding a common 
funding formula per student in each of the 5,347 elementary and high schools 
in the 72 school board districts of the province, regardless of geography and 
local tax base. The Review Committee, using floor plans for new schools under 
construction and detailed information from the School Facilities Inventory 
Database, came up with a $1.74 billion "pupil education grant," matching 
the square footage of a school to the number of students enrolled. Portables, 
day-care centres, gymnasiums and libraries were not included in the space 
calculations. 
The new grant system has three components: 
1. funding for school operation (heating, lighting, cleaning, maintenance) 
2. funding for school renewal (repairs and renovations) 
3. funding for new pupil places (construction or lease of additions and new 
schools) 
It is based on a complex calculation of the amount of space students are 
allotted. Each elementary student is entitled to 100 square feet and each high 
school student 130 square feet. Children in junior and senior kindergarten are 
given 50 square feet each because they are only in school half-days. Adult 
No. 42, 1998 127 
students qualify for 100 square feet. With this formula, school boards across 
the province are required to calculate the amount of space their students 
are entitled to. They then have to subtract the calculated space from the 
actual square footage of the school. If the existing space is greater than the 
space the ministry says they can have, the school is considered to have excess 
space and will not be funded. According to the Ontario government, every 
school must operate to its full capacity before a school board will be given 
new money toward building additional schools. The problem with the new 
funding formula is that it hurts older schools where hallways, stairs and walls 
make up a larger percentage of the square footage. It  also ignores that certain 
subjects require more space than others. Computer rooms, science labs and 
art rooms take up more space than a history class. 
In June of 1998 school boards were informed that they were expected to 
develop a pupil accommodation review policy by September 30, 1998. This 
policy was to include, if necessary, revisions to board policies under paragraph 
8(1) 26 of the Education Act to permit the consolidation of schools at  the 
end of the 1998-99 academic year. Boards are responsible for determining 
whether or not a school has excess space, and should be closed, leased or sold 
as surplus property. By Dec. 31, school boards across Ontario are to identify 
which school they will close at  the end of the school year and which school 
can accommodate new students. School boards across the province, well in 
advance of this deadline, have already announced the imminent closing of 
600 schools. 
The Toronto District School Board has been the most vociferous in its 
opposition to the new funding formula. Boards will receive $5.20 per square 
foot in pupil accommodation grants. For the Toronto board, the largest in 
the province, this means a loss of $322 million in income. The board presently 
spends $6.58 per square foot in maintenance costs for its schools. It is faced 
now with 11 million square feet of space that are no longer funded. This is 
the amount of space of all the schools in the city of Ottawa. The provincial 
government arrived a t  its $5.20 per square foot grant by simply taking the 
median board expenditure across the province for operating and maintenance 
costs and set it as the norm for all boards. The new funding formula represents 
a 21% cut of the operating costs of Toronto board. Lacking funding for 138 
of its schools the board insists that it is forced to close them. 
The closing of the schools has created not only an angry uproar among 
parents concerned about the loss of their neighbourhood school and that their 
children will be reassigned to more distant schools but also in the local com- 
munities. In many areas schools have become an integral part of community 
life where they are used for day care and recreation programs, meetings for 
community groups and language classes. Schools also provide space for fam- 
ily resources centres and 34 breakfast clubs. About 80 day-care centres are 
located in schools scheduled to be closed. The Ontario Coalition for Better 
128 No. 42, 1998 
Round- UplTour dlHorizon 
Child Care calculated that as many as 3,700 spaces may be lost at a time 
when 15,000 children are already waiting for a subsidized space and another 
21,000 children of workfare participants have been added to the waiting lists. 
There is considerable concern that because many of the schools to be closed 
are in the downtown area, parents may move into the suburbs. The result 
could be a hollowing out of the city core as has happened in many cities in 
the United States. 
The Ontario government has maintained that the boards have enough 
money and flexibility to work within the formula without having to close any 
schools. In a bizarre twist of events the premier has pleaded with Ontarians 
"to join him in a crusade to fight the school closing." With a provincial elec- 
tion expected in the coming year, the Ontario government is clearly worried 
about the fall-out of the school closures on its chances for re-election. In a 
surprise move, the premier announced on Nov. 6, 1998, that his government 
will make additional money available to the school boards in order to keep the 
schools from closing. The funding formula is to be amended to take account 
of the space problems of older schools and schools are no longer expected to 
have a 100% occupancy rate to receive funding. The Ontario government still 
insists that school boards can find savings in their non-class room operations. 
It has support from the provincial auditor, who found in his annual report 
that school boards lacked "satisfactory systems and procedures for the acqui- 
sition and management of school facilities." At the request of school boards, 
the province will also make available a private sector management team to 
advise them on finding savings in overhead and administration costs. 
The battle over the funding of education is far from over. It will continue 
in the media. Over the summer and fall, the government spent already $5.2 
million on an advertising campaign to sell its education changes. Further ad- 
vertising is planned to counter the opposition and other critics, who, according 
to the premier, insist that the government is cutting funding, when it is spend- 
ing more in the classroom and improving education quality. If Ontarians are 
to believe the premier, they first have to accept the new, now amended stu- 
dent funding formula. So far it appears to be yet another unacceptable social 
cost of the government's Common Sense Revolution. 
Manitoba Jim Silver 
University of Winnipeg 
In civic elections across Manitoba in October, video lottery terminals (VLTs) 
were scarcely an issue. Unlike Alberta, where seven communities voted to 
remove VLTs and where votes in other centres, including Edmonton, were 
No. 42,1998 


Ontario

Vosko, Leah F.

Workfare Temporaries: Workfare and the Rise of the Temporary Employment Relationship in Ontario

Swanson, Jean

British Columbia

Schmidt, Glen

Arctic Revoltion: Social Change in the Northwest Territories 1935-1993, by John David Hamilton

Groulx, Lionel-H.

L'économie sociale: l'avenir d'une illusion, de Louise Boivin et Marc Fortier (dir.)

Blais, Louise

Mulligan-Roy, Louise

Camirand, Claude

Un chien dans un jeu de quilles: Le mouvement des psychiatrisés et la politique de la santé mentale communautaire en Ontario

Hudson, Pete

Welfare Pluralism in the UK: Views from the Non-Profit Sector

Clutterbuck, Peter

A National Municipal Social Infrastructure Strategy

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