Province, feds commit $650M to school infrastructure
With the COVID-19 pandemic now firmly in its third wave, and Ontario students facing an indefinite break away from in-person learning, the provincial and federal governments have announced more than $650 million in funding to retrofit school buildings.
The governments made the announcement on April 14, and the funding will be used to provide critical infrastructure upgrades to protect students and staff from COVID-19.
The majority of funding will support ventilation projects that improve air quality in classrooms across the province. Projects include HVAC renovations to improve air quality, installing water bottle refilling stations to improve access to safe drinking water, investing in network and broadband infrastructure to support remote learning, and space reconfigurations such as new walls and doors to enhance physical distancing.
The funding will support more than 9,800 projects at almost 3,900 schools and co-located childcare facilities across 74 school boards.
It includes:
- almost $450 million for HVAC upgrades and improvements to air quality;
- up to $65 million to support physical distancing for students and staff;
- up to $60 million for technology to facilitate remote learning; and
- up to $80 million for health and safety initiatives such as installing handwashing stations or touchless faucets and soap dispensers.
A board-by-board list of funding recipients is available on the federal government’s website.
"We put a plan into action that leads the nation – delivering air ventilation improvements to over 95 percent of schools, 7,000 additional staff, and improved cleaning, testing and stronger screening,” said Education Minister Stephen Lecce. “This one-time investment will help improve the safety of schools, building upon Ontario’s annual investment of over $1.4 billion to maintain schools and $550 million to build new schools."
The Government of Canada is investing $525.2 million towards these projects through the COVID-19 Resilience stream of the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program. The Government of Ontario is contributing more than $131.3 million.
These new investments build on the more than $1 billion the Ontario government has already invested since 2019 in new schools and child-care spaces. The province says that 95 percent of Ontario schools have used this funding to upgrade or enhance to their air filtration systems.