A public school board trustee is calling for more transparency in how the government decides where to build new schools after producing an analysis she says suggests funding "in favour of Catholic schools."
The analysis shows the number of new student spaces funded for every 100 students already enrolled was higher for Catholic boards than for public boards in three rounds of capital funding announcements since 2020.
For projects announced in May 2022, 1.25 new spaces were funded for every 100 students enrolled in Catholic schools compared to 0.51 new spaces for every 100 students in public schools, according to the analysis, which included new spaces announced through new schools and additions to existing ones.
“I was concerned. We have such a need, and … we wanted to understand why, analyze why we weren't getting funding when it seemed like others, maybe not in as desperate a situation, are getting funding,” said the trustee, whose name The Trillium agreed not to disclose due to her fear of retribution. "It is just really, really upsetting when you have kids in portables, hundreds and hundreds in portables all over the place."
The trustee said there seems to be a "disconnect" between what's needed and what gets funded and called this "frustrating."
"It really is not good for student success to have these overcrowded schools all the time," the trustee said, adding she had heard concerns that Catholic schools are sometimes being approved in new subdivisions with large ethnic populations that wouldn’t attend Catholic schools because they follow a different religion.
The trustee said she took the ministry’s capital funding announcements from 2020 and 2022 and cross-referenced the approved projects with those listed on the Ontario Builds site to get more details for each. The Ontario Builds website lists the status of provincially funded infrastructure projects in various sectors. The projects were then sorted according to English, French, public and Catholic boards and used 2021-22 enrolment data from the Financial Accountability Office for the different schooling systems.
The latest round of approved capital projects wasn't included as the trustee said they're waiting for all the details to become public. In April, Stephen Lecce, formerly the education minister and now the minister of energy and electrification, announced $1.3 billion to build and expand 60 schools across the province as part of the 2023-24 round of capital priorities projects, but the projects weren't disclosed at the time and have been rolled out over the past couple months.
The trustee did acknowledge that the proportion of funded spaces for French schools — both public and Catholic — was higher than English as per the analysis, and wasn't sure why, but added it could be because it’s a smaller group of students.
The analysis showed that from the May 2022 announcement, public French boards got 2.82 new student spaces for every 100 students enrolled and Catholic French boards received 1.65 new spaces for every 100 students.
Overall, for that same round of capital projects, 53 per cent of the new spaces went to Catholic boards and 47 per cent went to public boards. For the other two earlier funding rounds, a larger percentage went to public boards, but the trustee said they would expect the proportion of new spaces awarded to the Catholic and public systems to match the proportion of students enrolled in each in order for funding to be "equitable."
The analysis showed that for all three funding rounds, the proportion of new spaces Catholic boards got was higher than the proportion of students enrolled in the Catholic system. Catholic boards served around 32 per cent of the student population, while public boards had 68 per cent of students, the trustee's charts show.
Ultimately the analysis was about transparency, the trustee said.
"I shouldn't have to do this, this should all be made easily available," she said. "I think we need more transparency. We're not never told why a school gets funded. They should be funded based on needs," the trustee said. "It just seems like we have such a system out of balance, and the losers are always the English public."
The trustee said this results in "inequitable situations" where overcrowded schools disproportionately affect vulnerable populations and immigrants.
"I should be able to go and see — this is the area, this is how many portables or this is how many kids are in feeder schools, and let's get the kids out of the portables first before we start like giving money to build schools in new developments that don't even have any houses yet," the trustee said.
Asked about the analysis, a spokesperson for the Ontario Public School Boards' Association (OPSBA) said the organization has "consistently stated that decisions on school capital should be based on the enrolment and local needs of local communities, as expressed by school boards."
OPSBA also called for more transparency in how capital funding project decisions are made.
The Trillium also reached out to the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association (OCSTA) and several school boards — both public and Catholic — with questions on the analysis. OCSTA did not respond to questions before publication. A few boards did.
"The Ministry of Education has a stringent process for the submission and evaluation of capital priority needs for school boards. Every year, we provide our capital priority submission, and we trust that the ministry's process has resulted in funds being allocated based on the greatest need in any given area," a spokesperson for the Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board wrote.
The Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario referred questions to the ministry, saying it's the one responsible for decisions on capital project funding, while the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board said they "respectfully decline comment on this issue."
Jodi Lloyd, chair of the Simcoe County District School Board, said while she can't speak directly to the analysis, she does think the question of whether Catholic boards are being funded for more new spaces as a proportion of enrolment needs to be examined across the province.
She said her board has had concerns about the capital funding process for a long time.
"The concerns we have, they have been ongoing with respect to how projects are selected, the criteria that is set, the process and the transparency surrounding capital funding," Lloyd told The Trillium.
She said the government's calls for proposed capital projects are "irregular," making it difficult for boards to plan, and sometimes the selected projects don't appear to meet the government's criteria.
Lloyd gave an example of the government approving a project for her board that was way down on its priority list and the education minister acknowledging that Attorney General Doug Downey, the MPP for the area where the school was approved, "worked hard to ensure it received the attention it deserved," as previously reported by Village Media.
"I believe the expectation of parents and our communities is that the projects are reviewed based upon need and funds are allocated based upon those needs and prioritizing those needs, but that doesn't seem to be the case," Lloyd said, adding that she thinks the process is "far too politicized."
"We see projects funded that are out of the blue or because a minister in the government advocated," she added, though she did acknowledge some good moves by the government including enabling boards to buy land in anticipation of future needs and speeding up the approvals process so schools can be built faster.
The education minister's spokesperson declined to answer The Trillium's questions about whether any changes would be made to the capital funding process and about trustees' worries over the perceived politicization of the process.
"For us there's no distinction," said Lecce, the former education minister, last week when asked about the concern of Catholic boards possibly getting more spaces.
"We have an obligation to build public schools, Catholic schools, English and French — we more than doubled the funding to do it," he said, adding that all communities are beneficiaries of this increased funding. "And the fact that we cut the timeline to build a school by half is a huge achievement for Ontario families, as we build at the rate of growth and we keep up with growth."
But as a board experiencing rapid growth and operating at over 100 per cent capacity in both elementary and high schools, Lloyd said she plans to bring the board's concerns to the new education minister, Todd Smith, who was brought into the role after a Thursday evening cabinet shuffle.
She said the board is often left having to decide whether to bus kids to another community that might have space in its schools or install portables.
"But we've reached our limit of available portables on some sites," Lloyd said. "And when we fill a school playground with portables, it puts further tax upon washrooms, libraries, gym space, playground space, because those schools have not been designed to have 13 portables on them."
-With files from Jessica Owen