The Second Wave of the Safe Schools Movement
The safe schools movement has lost momentum and needs to refocus the narrative in order to be remain relevant.
The return to school across Ontario has thus far been the story of community spread. As the government is quick to tell us, when you have Covid in the community you can expect it in the schools. As we round out October, our community case numbers are not particularly inspiring in several urban hot spots and, as expected, the number of infected students is now on the steady increase.
The best way to mitigate the spread of Covid within schools has always been smaller class sizes. The scientific data is clear on this. Smaller classes correlate very strongly to low rates of infection, so it should come as no surprise that the loudest advocates for a safe return to school have consistently advocated for a province-wide cap of 15 students. I have explored the origin of this proposed class size number, as well as its feasibility, and I do not see any way that this demand was ever possible given resource constraints (most notably: an apparent lack of qualified, healthy teachers).
Advocates for smaller classes set their vision on the magical number of 15. It was always wishful thinking, but making over-the-top demands is one method to shift the dialogue closer to your desired direction. Sometimes you need to ask for too much in the hopes that you get just a little less instead. In the case of Ontario’s return to school plan, advocates got very little to be happy about, which is the one of the dangers of asking for the impossible. Sometimes you end up getting nothing. The government is free to govern.
The Ford government has thus far dictated the terms of their pandemic response within the schools. Advocates for smaller classes watch in anger as class numbers swing wildly at uncomfortable levels. And as we survey the state of our educational system at the current moment, it is abundantly clear that the idea of a 15 student classroom is no longer helpful. Not when the school boards are struggling to adequately staff their current delivery models.
Many voices within the safe schools movement are struggling to pivot to new ideas; their voices have become muted and the necessary conversations are not being had. There is no coherent dialogue about executable strategies for reducing class sizes. When your advocacy is centred so aggressively around a single idea, your entire project can fall apart when that idea is no longer relevant. The safe schools movement in Ontario has gotten oddly quiet.
We are in a position of resource scarcity. School boards are scrambling to ensure that their supply lists are robust enough for the challenges of cold and flu season and a slow testing regime. So if smaller class advocates want their voices to be heard, now is the time to acknowledge these hard realities head on and make demands that are grounded in what is actually possible at this moment.
Defining the possible is no small task. The general teacher shortage and the unequal distribution of teachers between rural and urban areas makes province-wide classroom caps logistically impossible. And even in the urban areas, relatively few eligible teachers returned to the classroom, and nobody knows how shallow the supply pools might get this winter. Simply put, everyone is scrambling and the time for well-wrought plans has passed us by. We do not have the luxury of time.
If we are serious about smaller classes, we really need to be sure about what it is we are asking for. I have been advocating for a localized strategy that simply identifies population density as a crude metric for increased spending. Specifically, parachute additional funding into the GTA because that is where we will see the vast majority of the new cases. We are slowly seeing additional hot spot funding from this government materialize. I see new avenues for change.
I am no longer looking for a specific classroom cap. I actually never was. The entire idea seemed too difficult to advocate for in any meaningful way. It was a non-starter, with no clear visibility on the staffing situation and a fuller view too far off on the horizon. Seeing the shift from in-person to remote to hybrid-learning has only reaffirmed my belief that our options are much more limited than many people first suspected. So I am proposing a much simpler course of advocacy. I am asking for the very possible.
My very modest proposal begins first with a moral recognition that we are obligated to protect the health and well-being of our children in an environment that, day-by-day, is becoming increasingly unsafe for many children. When I think about the problem in these terms, I can very quickly sell myself on pragmatic approaches. The best interests of my own children depend on that pragmatism, so I’m happy to leave my ideals where they lay.
The provincial government and the MOE have already downloaded responsibility for school planning to the school boards. Each board is the expert on its own particular circumstances, and I think I am not exaggerating when I say that nobody has enough time to wait for Lecce to review--let alone comprehend--the circumstances of each one. There is no time for bold, high-level solutions. We need constructive, ground-level solutions enacted at the board level. We need to put money as quickly as possible into the hands of people who are able to spend it immediately to make incremental improvements.
My safe schools advocacy is very much centred around funding strategies similar to what Lecce and Ford announced for Ottawa, Peel, and Toronto. The Ontario PCs found $35M to send to hot spots for pandemic relief, which shows that they are very much aware that the success of their reopening plan (and their political future) hinges on public perception that they reacted adequately to material changes in the community. Expect more such announcements.
Ford and Lecce have shown they will send money with very few restrictions to urban hot spots. I do not believe this to be a one-time emergency transfer. I expect that there will be many more opportunities over the coming months for the same provision of emergency funding to other regional bodies, including regional public health units and school boards, who have demonstrated very functional inter-agency relationships.
The Ford government has demonstrated their responsiveness to heightened community risk. The Conservatives reluctantly realize that they need to intervene when statistical metrics and public outcry compel them to do so. The intervention in Ottawa and the GTA establishes the precedent for where and how this government will get involved. The government is very much content to rely on its existing plan until the precise moment when that plan suddenly appears woefully insufficient.
A path forward for safe school advocacy is as simple as demanding emergency funding to school boards and public health units. Make these demands early and often. Where hot spots have emerged, the localized demand for emergency funding has been shown to get results. This particular government does not like to give out money, but in very limited circumstances it has shown that it will. Our job is to amplify those specific circumstances and establish the narrative of emergency funding.
We have a government that is sitting on an unprecedented amount of federal money that has to be spent at some point, with an election slowly appearing around the corner. The conditions are very favourable to spending money, even for a Conservative. We need to push the emergency funding narrative and then grit our teeth every time Ford offers a late helping hand to a community that never should have had to wait so long.
The Ontario Conservatives are quick to take credit for the emergency funding that they have provided. I’m happy to let them claim the idea as their own. Doug Ford and Stephen Lecce have shown that they will provide emergency funds to affected communities in order to mitigate the risk of their poorly-conceived reopening plan. I hope they enjoy making these special announcements. I intend to keep them at the podium.