You be the detective.

The Toronto Star has launched School Work , a project that allows readers — parents, teachers, students and others — to look at how money is being spent in Toronto’s aging public schools. Find your school at School Work . Tell us if you think too much is being spent on some jobs. Tell us what jobs need doing to make your school a better, safer learning environment.

Remember the $143 pencil sharpener installation? That’s where the idea came from.

Two years ago, the Star told you that Canada’s biggest school board was wasting precious dollars on construction and maintenance. The sharpener was one of thousands of examples. In that case, taxpayers were charged $143 for a Toronto District School Board carpenter to drive to the school to attach the sharpener to a classroom wall with four tiny screws.

We also told stories of the school board paying $190 to replace a toilet seat. Paying $2,442 to mount a $127 whiteboard on a wall. Then there was the electrical outlet —$3,000 to put a new plug in a library. That new plug took four hours to install, but taxpayers were billed for 76 hours of labour (almost $3,000), which sources say was done to account for the time of idle workers who had no assignments that week.





The Star has now obtained and analyzed three years of school board work orders, providing them to the public with simple search functions online at thestar.com . It is a rare chance to examine and comment on how your dollars are spent. In a school board that includes seven schools built in the 1800s, and many more that are 50, 60, or 70 years old, there is lots of work to do. Painting, landscaping, carpentry, wall repairs, electrical repairs, graffiti removal, leaky roofs, water fountain fixes and many more jobs. The ice storm was not kind to schools, and many leaky roofs and crumbling ceilings still need work.

Since the Star first broke the story two years ago, the school board, with the help of strong consultant reports, made some changes, though problems still exist. We spoke recently to Angelos Bacopoulos, chief facilities manager for the TDSB. The veteran public servant is well aware that the province has estimated it will cost $3.1 billion to bring Toronto’s 600-plus schools into proper, workable, safe condition.

He has an annual budget of about $80 million to tackle it and has joked that he feels like “the story of the Little Dutch Boy,” so awash is the school board in repair issues.

Bacopoulos said his team has achieved the following:

Bundling of jobs: Two years ago, carpenters, electricians, plumbers and other workers would do a small job in School X, then drive 40 minutes in traffic to School Y to do another small job, and so on. Now, work orders are organized so that the carpenter, for example, would spend a full day at School X. Reassigning of small jobs: Caretakers can now do small jobs, such as installing a pencil sharpener or putting up a shelf. Firings: As reported Wednesday, the TDSB’s facilities department, which oversees several areas, including construction and maintenance, has fired 52 construction or maintenance workers for cause; 100 more have been disciplined. These relate to allegations of fraud or what Bacopoulos calls “time theft.” Monitoring of vehicles: GPS tracking devices are now installed on most Toronto school board construction and maintenance vehicles. This is in response to cases of workers not showing up at jobs, despite time cards showing they did. The Star previously reported instances of managers finding shift workers goofing off at Tim Horton’s, having a romantic interlude in a car or delivering flyers for a personal paving company, with plans to use school board equipment. Reporting system: A system has been created whereby carpenters report to carpenters (who are managers) and plumbers report to plumbers, etc. Before, supervisors would not have the experience to understand what was value added and what was a problem.

In August, the school board will attempt to renegotiate its contact with the council of unions — the Maintenance and Construction Skilled Trades Council, led by Jimmy Hazel — which has a hammerlock on all work done for public schools in Toronto. Even if an outside contractor is brought in to do work the council members cannot do, the contractor has to pay special union dues to the council. That contract expired more than a year ago but the Liberal government extended it to August 2014.

Previous stories in the Star revealed hundreds of thousands of dollars in political donations to the Liberals from Hazel’s group and related unions that perform work for the school board. The Liberals responded one year by providing $253,000 worth of gift cards for Hazel’s TDSB workers, redeemable at Tiger Direct.

The Star asked Hazel this week to comment on coming changes at the school board. Hazel would not consent to an interview, but sent a short email response referring to the issue of minor repairs like the pencil sharpener.

“It is widely recognized by everyone that past facilities and maintenance work orders prepared by TDSB management lacked proper details rendering them misleading and/or inaccurate,” Hazel wrote. “Fortunately, trustees have acted with changes to management that has seen improvements to work orders, productivity and efficiency and now prohibit management from sending skilled trades to do minor school repairs that can easily be done by school caretakers.”

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