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OCDSB Oral Presentation to the
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
Pre-Budget Consultation
23 January 2019
Good morning. I'm Lynn Scott, Chair of the Ottawa-Carleton District School
Board. With me is Michael Carson, our Chief Financial Officer. We appreciate the
opportunity to speak with you today.
Like you, we want to see a provincial budget that meets the needs of communities and
families across this province and ensures a prosperous future for Ontarians. We
believe that public education is foundational to a provincial economy that encourages
businesses to grow, creates jobs, and supports the success and well-being of
individuals and families.
In December, your Education Funding Guide spoke of achieving better and more
equitable outcomes for students while ensuring accountability, value for money, and
efficiency. As a school board providing front-line services directly to students and their
families, we are ideally positioned to partner with you and with other front-line service
providers in Ottawa to achieve these objectives.
But this costs money, and we live in interesting economic times. It's all the more
important, therefore, for school boards to be able to count on reasonable, predictable
and sustainable funding that support our multi-year planning to improve student
achievement, student well-being, equity of outcomes, and fiscal accountability.
First, let's talk about managing assets—our schools, our infrastructure, and our
people. Our facilities are not just education assets but also community assets. They
need looking after, based on the Facility Condition Index and other data sources. Our
operational funding must be adequate to support ongoing maintenance, generous
enough to allow us to make inroads on our maintenance backlog, and flexible enough to
give us latitude to use funding efficiently by combining compatible projects and
engaging in planned multi-year projects.
Adequate capital funding lets us manage change effectively. There are several parts to
this idea. To start, the government has said it wants to reduce the practice of"hallway
medicine" but growing enrolments mean we face potential "hallway education" issues in
parts of Ottawa. We need capital funding for additions and new schools, and we also
need the policy tools that enable good planning for the efficient use of space. We need
the revised Pupil Accommodation Review Guideline so that we can adjust our facilities
inventory to match current and projected demographics, and we need your impending
OCDSB Oral Presentation, January 23, 2019 Page 1
changes for Education Development Charges, to complete our new and much-needed
EDC by-law by March.
Capital funding is also needed for major renovations. If we want to graduate students
well-equipped for success in a future world, we must modernize classrooms and labs to
support changing curricular needs for technological education (both hard-tech and hi-
tech), STEM subjects and the arts. Your construction cost benchmarks must reflect the
reality of the local market for builders and skilled trades.
Neither can we afford to ignore the need to invest in back-office technology and replace
outdated legacy systems that impede efficient operations and planning. Also, for better
management of our human assets, in the face of rising staff absenteeism rates, we
need operational funding to be able to track and backfill when staff are not at work, as
well as provincial policy tools to help us manage absences and staff shortages
Second, let's talk partnerships, and how the provincial budget can facilitate partnerships
in support of student learning and well-being. As a front-line service provider, the
OCDSB is asking you to reduce barriers to integrated service delivery, and to provide
funding in ways that support joint delivery of key services in our schools with other
community institutions and other service sectors.
Our existing partnership with the Catholic board, the Ottawa Student Transportation
Authority, has produced major efficiencies, but we now see continuing cost pressures,
issues over driver shortages, and the potential impact of arbitration decisions as
contracts with bus operators are renewed. Without improved transportation funding,
there may be no choice but to reduce service, with a significant impact on students and
families.
Please design funding to support new partnerships, particularly with regard to integrated
delivery of mental health services and integrated provision of health and social services
to our high-needs special education students. With a full array of interventions to
address behavioural issues and the developmental needs of autistic students as early
as possible in a student's school career, children can become full participants in their
ongoing learning and graduate better prepared for a productive independent life. We
need be able to increase our in-school supports and coordinate with services that health
care and social services sector professionals can provide within the school setting.
Third, the OCDSB needs the autonomy and flexibility to respond efficiently to local
needs. Some of the provincial Grants for Student Needs vary board to board but they're
based on out-dated census data. Our local needs are best understood through
reviewing a range of other data sources specific to our student population and local
conditions, including locally administered early development instruments, the annual
demographic data from EQAO testing, and the results of our school climate surveys.
We are currently in the process of implementing the collection of identity-based data
that we hope will allow us to differentiate resource allocations and build our capacity to
OCDSB Oral Presentation, January 23, 2019 Page 2
address achievement gaps across the district for special education students, English
Language Learners, Indigenous students, socioeconomically disadvantaged students,
racialized minority students and other specific groups in need of targeted
supports. These students need equitable access to quality education, and we need
your continued support for this work.
Past provincial initiatives, such as the Local Priorities funding, gave us some 87
positions strategically deployed to support our schools and our students. Please
maintain and improve this funding stream so that we can do what our data tells us our
students need, and what our data validates as effective strategies.
In summary, we're asking for three things: first, support for managing our assets
efficiently for the benefit of students, second, reduction of barriers and support for more
local partnerships for integrated multi-sectoral service delivery to students, and third,
greater autonomy and flexibility for us, as the front-line provider of public education, to
address local needs.
As I said before, this costs money, but research shows education funding is one of the
best investments our government can make to improve the lives of children and
families. Our local data reveals responsibilities that you share with us. With good
governance, adequate funding, and wise use of available resources and assets, we
believe that our success will be your success.
Thank you. We'd be pleased to respond to questions.
OCDSB Oral Presentation, January 23, 2019 Page 3
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