Nibbled books, furniture and plants. Excrement and urine strewn even in the classrooms and lockers. Insects that swarm around fridges before going for a ride on the back of a lunch box. In addition to the small and large humans that make up the fauna of our schools, there are too often contingents of rats, mice and cockroaches, whose presence tends to become widespread in a public network that is showing its age. It’s hard not to see it as a tangible expression — another one — of the different speeds that are dragging our education system down.
This forced cohabitation has a cost. Taking an interest in the phenomenon, our reporter Zacharie Goudreault discovered that the two largest school service centers in the province have seen their spending on extermination services increase. Very active and invested in an approach focused on prevention, the Marguerite-Bourgeoys School Service Center saw its budget increase from $69,657 in 2019 to $494,553 during the school year which is ending. The Montreal School Service Center, the largest in the province, saw its numbers increase by 24% for the current school year.
The problem is not just Montreal. Mouse droppings found on food in a school in Outaouais. Rodent control operation in a school in Bas-Saint-Laurent. Limited access to certain premises of a school in Montérégie due to the presence of rodents. Temporary closure of a school in Gatineau to deal with a recurring cockroach infestation. This list brings back very bad memories for those who have had — or still have — both feet in it.
Because they are teeming with children, school environments and daycare environments are labeled as critical environments calling for increased security measures which already complicate interventions. In Montreal this year, the recipe also included a particularly mild winter, a strike that left the premises empty for weeks, as well as more limited options in the poisons that could be used.
In 2022, the City of Montreal banned certain pesticides in order to better protect human health and preserve the environment and biodiversity. There is no question of criticizing these withdrawals, science and public health know what they are doing. Especially since rodenticides and insecticides are not panaceas.
Exterminating without acting on human behavior is the equivalent of leaving the doors wide open to new infestations. We have increased awareness campaigns regarding bedbugs, the same should be done with cockroaches. This tenacious little beast is still taken too lightly by Quebecers, according to exterminators, who note that the cockroach thrives on our combined casualties.
The key factor, however, remains the immediate environment, over which school boards have little control. Yes, they can fill a crack here and there. Yes, they can raise awareness among parents, students and staff about closer management of premises, backpacks and lunch boxes. But as long as they are stuck with dilapidated facilities, it will remain a Sisyphean task.
The Legault government does not like people talking to it about the dilapidation of our schools. He who loves dashboards has literally taken a dislike to calculating the dilapidation of our schools. Its bulletin, revised to take into account the value of the work to be carried out based on the replacement value of the building, displays this year – oh surprise! — a decreasing number of school buildings in poor condition (from 61% to 56% in one year). It’s still one establishment out of two!
No offense to him, the school fauna also has eyes to see and ears to hear the vermin who laugh well at this improved grade. The double standard is still there, and it adds to other indications of a public network condemned to second class compared to the advantageous means of the private sector.
Just last week, Quebec saw firsthand the deleterious effects of two-speed heat wave management with, on one side, air-conditioned classes, mainly private, and, on the other, dilapidated classes heated to white heat, massively public. This gap is added to the well-documented gap in the ventilation of schools, whose two-tone assessment remains unchanged despite repeated calls for action.
And we’re not even talking here about the flourishing school market which has allowed, quietly, but surely, the perpetuation of a three-tier school model, which the Minister of Education prefers to reduce to a vulgar ideological slogan. A bit like the canary in the mine, the cockroach in the school doesn’t lie, however. It shines the spotlight on what we do not yet see or refuse to see, namely that equality rings more and more hollow in education in Quebec.