Persuasive Essay on Ontario's School Facilities Need to Be Improved

Do you dislike your school’s facilities? The school facilities are failing and students deserve better. These problems are usually caused by the school not caring or the school not having enough money in their budget to fix it. Students want to change certain things like portables, slippery floors, transgender restrooms/locker rooms, and air conditioning. Ontario's school facilities need to be improved.

Firstly, the portables in schools are fine, but eliminating them completely and adding more rooms to the school will make it better. For Instance, eliminating portables and adding new rooms to the school will make it simpler to use the restroom, fill your water bottle, and make lockdown safer for students and teachers. Having a classroom in the building will take up less time to use school facilities and will be more convenient in bad weather. “Portable classrooms can have poor ventilation, inadequate lighting and contain building materials that can release harmful chemicals”(Ahearn, 14). Therefore, removing portables and moving to the building will be a better and more convenient learning place for students. Like the quote said, portables do have bad ventilation and poor lighting. The only negative moving inside the building is if you find yourself in the middle of a fire. Since high schools have lots of students, being in the school during a fire will be harder to get out of. If you are in a portable you don’t have to worry about being in a crowd and your portable catching on fire.  Portables are safer if the building catches on fire which is clear because portables are not connected to the building. In case of fire, portables have an easy route to the back of the school field which is convenient.

Furthermore, restrooms are one of the most significant issues a school can have. They may perhaps be improved by having clean and dry floors and LGBTQ+ locker rooms/restrooms. Clean floors and dry floors can prevent slip and fall accidents and make them more suitable for students. Every year an average of 540,00 Americans reported having a slip or fall accident due to wet floors. Slip and fall accidents occur more than you think and if schools can clean and dry their floors the school would not have as many accidents. Accidents can lead to missing out on school, work etc. If schools added gender-neutral locker rooms and restrooms, transgender students would have bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. A study conducted that 36% of transgender students reported a case of bullying or sexual harassment because they were not given transsexual locker rooms (Edith, 9). This shows that transgender people often do not get what they want because of their sexuality or gender. Unless a school decides to install an LGBTQ+ locker room or restrooms, transgender students will have to use the restroom that does not match their gender identity. 

Finally, air conditioning, which there is none in portables and barely anything inside the building. Air conditioning is important on hot and dry days even though you are not hot. Keeping your body cool is important because too much heat can cause damage to your brain or organs. Air conditioning is a reliable source for cooling down the body from being overheated. That is why we need air conditioning or something we can rely on to get a cool body. Although air conditioning is a really good way to cool down your body, it is also very expensive. An article about air conditioning in every classroom says that it would take up to $400 million for only GTA schools to get air conditioning (Isabel, 10). Air conditioning is very useful but still expensive. TDSB alone had an annual budget of $3.4 billion, but that money goes towards funding teachers and education, not air conditioning. Teachers have been using other ways to cool down the students such as closing blinds to not let the sun in and avoiding excess movement.

In conclusion, eliminating portables should be an option in the future and schools can take more precautions ensuring that their restrooms are dry so no slip and slide accidents occur. People who don't identify as the genders male and female should get their own restroom/locker room to limit the amount of sexual harassment. Schools should think of acquiring some air conditioners so that classrooms without a cooling system can cool their bodies. The school facilities are lacking the amount of approval by students. These problems are usually caused by the school not caring or the school not having enough money in their budget to fix it. Schools in Ontario should listen to their students' thoughts on how they can make the school safer and a better environment for learning.