Whenever there is heavy rain at Humberside Collegiate Institute in Toronto, parts of the high school are closed.
Three floors of the stairwell are cordoned off because of flooding. Water seeping from the roof is leaking into at least 20 places throughout the school and collecting in garbage cans. In the basement, a corridor containing lockers is littered with deep puddles.
It’s a scene that Bhutila Karpoche, NDP MP for Parkdale—High Park, described in a widely watched series of social media posts to draw the Progressive Conservative government’s attention to the poor state of schools in Toronto and across the province.
“Successive governments, both Liberal and Conservative, have failed to provide funding for repairing schools and now they are literally falling into disrepair,” she told reporters in Queen’s Park on Wednesday.
“I don’t want to hear any talking points. I want the minister to get the schools in order.”
Karpoche and the advocacy group Fix Our Schools say the backlog in school maintenance and repairs in the province was a whopping $16.8 billion in 2022 and continues to grow each year.
Krista Wylie, co-founder of Fix Our Schools and mother of a student at Humberside Collegiate Institute, said they have been trying to raise awareness of the growing problem for a decade.
She said the group has heard from school staff, students and parents about classrooms where temperatures drop above 35 degrees Celsius in the summer and below 13 degrees Celsius in the winter. Other concerns that are not as easily identified include air quality issues, mold growth and inadequate fire safety systems that contribute to unsafe learning and working conditions, she said.
“There are countless examples of the decline in our children’s schools across Ontario that are alarming,” Wylie told CBC Radio. Metro Morning.
“And while the example we saw this week is visually very alarming … unfortunately I wouldn’t say it’s the absolute worst.”
Krista Wylie, co-founder of Fix Our Schools, stands outside her son’s school, Humberside Collegiate Institute. The school has been battling flooding that advocates say poses a health and safety risk. (Angelina King/ CBC)
The NDP and Fix Our Schools say the province needs to increase funding, but Education Minister Stephen Lecce says the issue is up to school boards.
Province: School board is responsible
In response to Karpoche’s concerns, Lecce told MPs in Queen’s Park that he wanted school boards, particularly the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), to “do their jobs.”
“The TDSB is sitting on money from its $315 million maintenance fund instead of spending it on this very roof,” Lecce said.
He pointed to the $1.4 billion earmarked for school repairs in the provincial budget for the current school year.
“Stand up against TDSB and demand better services for your students,” he said.
In an email to CBC Toronto, the TDSB said staff are investigating the leaking roof at Humberside College Institute and staff and students are being redirected to alternate stairs and exits.
“It is noteworthy that while the TDSB spends millions of dollars each year on roof replacements and repairs, we currently have a total maintenance and repair backlog of more than $4 billion,” the email said.
The board said it spent about $370 million on repairs and similar projects last year – a record – and expects to spend even more this year. About $380 million has been earmarked for similar projects this year but has not yet been officially spent, citing delays in obtaining materials, permits and the availability of qualified contractors.
More than half of the TDSB’s schools are over 60 years old, according to its website. The board has identified about 23,500 different school repairs as being in need of repair, with 70 percent of them in critical or poor condition.
It is estimated that if current provincial funding changes and no additional funds are made available, the backlog could reach $4.9 billion by 2027.
Jack Stone, a Year 11 student at Humberside Collegiate Institute, said he and many other students had become accustomed to the flooding and knew they would have to take a different route to class when it rained, but he hoped it would not be like this forever.
“I love this school, man. They need to fix it,” he said.
