Climate Adaptation Demands a New Vision for Public Education - This is no Time for Austerity
The summer of 2025 has been another incremental climate crisis benchmark, with extreme heat and wildfires across Canada. The latest report from the Canadian Climate Institute has confirmed that Canada will not meet the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommendation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030. Our ability to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees has ended. The climate crisis is here to stay. This is our new reality.
The Climate Crisis and School Board Operations and Governance
Remember the pandemic? It demonstrated the incapacities of our educational systems in the face of adversity; a lost opportunity for our governments to get ahead of the increase and magnitude of future disruptions to our outdated industrial-era systems of education. In this post-pandemic era, we (still) need to know what we don't know about the remote learners.
Public education across Canada is unprepared for the climate crisis. But Ontario now stands out as a particular challenge due to a political movement that wants to replace local autonomy with centralized control. In advance of Bill 33, the Supporting Children and Students Act, 2025, Ontario’s minister of education has publicly stated that “If it looks like we can deliver the product better”, “and if that means eliminating trustees, then I'm going to do it”. There are several implications to this that require a response from proponents of public education.
Firstly, Climate disasters hit different communities, and the people residing in those communities, unequally. Wildfires, floods, and heatwaves don’t just damage infrastructure; they expose and deepen existing inequities. Marginalized groups like seniors, unhoused people, people with disabilities, and children and youth from lower income families face greater barriers to evacuation, recovery, and support. The climate crisis will continue to increase the need for social services that can address the unique needs of local communities, of which public schools have a vital role to play.
Referring to public education as a “product” is a signal that the provincial government intends to shift to market-based reforms; a first step to privatization. Redirecting resources to the private sector is really about restructuring education systems around profit. In a market-driven model, education is treated as a purchasable good instead of a public right. This hinders the capacity of the system to address social needs and inequalities. A market driven approach for education systems in the face of the adversity before us cannot work.
Secondly, eliminating school board trustees is akin to eliminating local participation of public schools in local climate adaptation planning and action. But local participation is essential. Rising temperatures and extreme weather disrupt caregiving, school operations, and health services. Communities know their own vulnerabilities, whether it’s a flood-prone neighborhood or a school without cooling systems.
As elected representatives, trustees are accountable to local concerns, including climate adaptation. They can lead the development of school district climate action plans that reflect local vulnerabilities and strengths instead of centralized “one-size-fits-all” approaches. They can also help to prioritize equity by ensuring that adaptation and climate event responses reach those most affected. Trustees can help to build partnerships by collaborating with parents, youth, local governments, and nonprofits to create district-wide climate action plans that need to align with municipal climate strategies.
Policy/Program and Funding Support for Community Schools
Ontario’s Bill 33 is happening at a time when climate adaptation needs an increase, not decrease, in local community alignment with education. Now, more than ever, we need strong systems of public education that can work seamlessly with community needs through integrated services for students, families and school district staff. Government policy/program and funding support for community schools is necessary - with adaptation to the climate crisis applied as a driver for system change.
Re: Policy/program Support
We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Ontario already has policy frameworks available to enable the transformation of education system operations that can promote community schools. Consider the following snapshot of Ontario Ministry of Education policies, some newly issued, others long-standing, indicating their original intent, implementation status, challenges, and opportunities for community engagement.
Source: Microsoft Copilot, September 2025
Comment:
It can be seen that there is a plethora of policy frameworks available in Ontario to promote community schools. Climate adaptation can act as a driver for system change via climate adaptation plans and operational supports to ensure effective policy implementation.
Note: If you live in a different jurisdiction than Ontario, you can find the policy frameworks already available to enable the transformation of education system operations in favour of community schools and the need for climate crisis adaptation.
Re: Funding Support
Q. Why have so many Ontario policy/program initiatives, originally deemed worthy of contributing to public education (and community schools), struggled with their implementation?
A. The provincial government equates accountability for local policy execution on school boards that receive the funding it claims is sufficient and increasing. The data tell a different story. While overall funding for education in Ontario has increased, real funding that accounts for inflation has actually declined by as much as $1,500 per student since 2018. It is reasonable to suggest that the school district policy/program implementation gap can be attributed, in some degree at least, to inadequate government funding.
Beware the Mantra of “More Money for the Classroom”
In the 2023–24 school year, the Ontario government launched its back-to-basics education agenda, with a stated purpose to refocus the system on core academic achievement, job readiness, and accountability. Support for “non-essential” programs such as Indigenous education, the arts, and civics that benefit from community engagement are at risk as public education is reshaped into leaner, more utilitarian systems.
The “back to basics” reform strategy links fiscal accountability, simplified priorities and centralized oversight with making more money available for classrooms. This is a powerful but misleading message for parents who understandably see education through the faces of the teachers that interact daily with their children.
What parents are less likely to recognize is the need for well supported policies, programs and operational processes that create the conditions for new age effective classrooms. As the pandemic demonstrated, the traditional classroom does not easily adjust to adversity. The climate crisis will also intensify the already significant mental health needs of students and families.
A new interpretation of public education via community schools will enable educators to work collaboratively with community partners and students based upon their interests and learning needs, In the rapidly changing world around us, teachers need to be supported to grow their professional judgment and adaptive expertise with real-time data and processes. They need to respond to immediate challenges with creativity and confidence in support of student-centred learning.
What “Accountability” Means
The back-to-basics focus on accountability has resulted in a number of Ontario school districts being placed under provincial supervision for questionable spending and/or failing to pass budgets that comply with the funding provided. With the provincial government moving to assume greater control of local education budgets, it deserves to be asked “to whom and what are education budgets actually accountable?”
No one will dispute the need for school boards to act as guardians of the public good through sound financial practices. But accountability must also be defined by the capacity of the government to secure sufficient resources to ensure viable systems of public education; linked as they are with the stability and livelihood of local communities, province and nation as a whole.
In this respect there has been a substantive abandonment of provincial funding for school boards; a fact illustrated by the Ontario Government’s own Financial Accountability Office (FAO) in its 2024 School Building Condition, Student Capacity and Capital Budgeting Report. The report provides data indicating that 1,813, or 37.4% of Ontario’s school buildings are below a state of good repair (SOGR), with this percentage exceeding 40% to 50% for some school boards. Remarkably, 84.1% of Toronto District School Board (TDSB) school buildings are below a state of good repair.
Furthermore, the Costing Climate Change Impacts to Public Infrastructure (CIPI) report commissioned by the provincial government in 2023 states that an additional annual 16 per cent increase to provincial infrastructure budgets is necessary simply to address the impacts of the climate crisis.
The Alternative - Education as Investment
The Ontario government is using back-to-basics essential learning as a platform for more centralized control and austerity funding for K-12 education via:
real per-student funding declines despite inflation and rising needs,
cuts to core services (e.g., special education, mental health, school repairs) while maintaining or slightly increasing overall budget lines,
the use of accounting mechanisms to create the illusion of investment without actual spending power, and
actions that prioritize fiscal restraint over policy and program support for equity, inclusion, and student well-being.
This is happening because education continues to be interpreted and presented as an expense to overall provincial budgets.
What if conventional thinking was disrupted to reframe the narrative? After all, every dollar invested in education is proven to result in multiple dollars of return. Knowledge-based economic growth is fueled through investments in equitable, high-quality education with the added benefits of higher tax revenues, innovation, productivity, civic participation and reduced spending on health and welfare. Education isn’t a cost. It’s the smartest investment we can make.
If we want community schools to thrive in a climate-challenged and globally competitive future, we must treat public education as the foundation, not the overhead. That means investing in professional development, inclusive programming, and community partnerships. It means funding schools not just to meet financial benchmarks, but to build futures that also account for the realities before us.
Phil Dawes
September 25, 2025