The Ontario government is being urged to provide funding to make sure every school in Windsor-Essex has air conditioning as an extreme heat wave heats up the province.
Mario Spagnuolo, the local president of the Greater Essex Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, made the call Wednesday as he appeared along with Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles and Windsor West New Democrat MPP Lisa Gretzky.
Speaking outside Prince Edward Public School on Giles Boulevard in Windsor, Spagnuolo called this not just an education issue but also a work-place issue when the employer is not taking every reasonable precaution to keep it safe.
He says they're losing valuable time because these kids need to be educated in a comfortable environment where they can learn and prosper.
"You can't do that when rooms are reaching 35–40 degrees Celsius, plus the humidity; it's not possible. It's just about survival to get through the day," says Spagnuolo. "That's not overexaggerating things; people are leaving. When I asked teachers if students were leaving during the day, they are. One teacher said half of her class was missing."
Spagnuolo says no one is advocating to close down the schools and build brand new ones; what they want is investments in the schools to make them appropriate for kids.
"We have teachers that are going during their lunch to the corner store to buy popsicles.," he says. "They ran out of freezer space, so they had to go to the grocery store or corner store to buy freezies and popsicles. They're bringing in their own fans, I think one teacher had three or four fans of her own that she brought in."
According to a list provided by MPP Gretzky, the public board has 33 high school and elementary schools with air conditioning, 30 without air conditioning, and six with partial air conditioning.
A spokesperson for the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board says "all eight of our high schools are 100 percent cooled (that may be a combination of rooftop units or in-room unit ventilators), about one-third of our elementary schools are 100 percent cooled (that may be a combination of rooftop units, in-room unit ventilators, or window units), and the remaining two-thirds of elementary schools range in the amount of classroom and office space that's cooled from 60 to 96 percent."
Spagnuolo says education workers are funding the system out of their own pockets to make things more comfortable for the kids.
"We're dealing with children here, and that should be a priority for this provincial government," he says. "This is not a school board problem; that's actually insulting that the minister of education, new to the portfolio, would actually say that. He should know very well that the boards have no way to increase revenue, it only comes from the government."
Earlier this week, a spokesperson for the Ontario Minister of Education, Todd Smith, told CTV News Toronto that while the government has invested millions of dollars into school boards, it’s up to the boards themselves to decide what to do with the funds.
"It is the responsibility of the school board to have protocols in place as to how they deal with heat in schools, as well as addressing school renewal needs and requirements. We expect schools to listen to the concerns of parents and needs of students," the spokesperson said.