St. Matthew left struggling with portables

East-end schools are amongst those receiving repairs under the fourth year of an Ontario government program to improve educational facilities – funds for which Orléans-Cumberland school board trustees are thankful, but say only chip away at a small amount of the work that needs to be completed.

“There is a serious backlog in school facility repairs across Ontario,” says Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) trustee John Shea, noting the Ottawa area alone still has over $300 million worth of upgrade projects in its database.

“The money essentially freezes that backlog, and obviously the board would prefer to see the ministry actually reduce that backlog – however, this is nonetheless a good first step. I welcome these funds because school boards across Ontario certainly need them.”

Transfers of close to $10.5 million to the OCDSB and around $5.2 million to the Ottawa Catholic School Board (OCSB) were only officially announced Jan. 16, although both boards were anticipating the money and have already decided how to spend most of it.

Catholic trustee Stephen Blais says the “biggest capital project I’ve got my eye on” remains an addition at St. Matthew to replace an army of 22 portables at the school, which houses around 1,400 students. Although Blais estimates the cost of an addition would be $3.5 million – with the same price tag for Lester B. Pearson, which suffers from similar overpopulation problems – this money from the province had to be spent specifically on repairs.

In November, Blais put forward a motion to examine what options the board has to build an addition without any extra money from the province, and expects a report from board staff in March.

“We’re not flush with cash. We rely on the province to provide our funding. Short of doing some extraordinary things, we’ll be relying on the province to give us the money (for an addition),” Blais says, calling on local elected officials to step up and make it a priority at Queen’s Park. “It’s almost entirely up to the province that they come up to the plate and take responsibility for decades of overcrowding.”

The province previously said it wouldn’t help build an addition because St. Matthew’s enrolment dropped by 18 students two years ago and doesn’t want an underused facility down the road.

Blais disputes that reasoning because a drop from 130 per cent capacity to 127 per cent capacity means the school is still 27 per cent over capacity. On top of that, he continues, St. Peter and Lester B. Pearson are also overcrowded, and predicting population growth in the east end decades down the road is really just a guessing game.

“It’s great that the province is stepping up to provide us money for the schools to ensure they don’t become a financial and educational burden going forward,” Blais says. “But at the same time, I think the province has a number of changes it can make to other funding formulas.”

BY THE NUMBERS

Cairine Wilson
Electrical fire alarm system: $28,051
Electrical lighting repairs: $52,416
Interior locker repairs: $200,000
Interior toilet partitions: $125,000

Dunning Foubert
Electrical lighting: $16,380

Fallingbrook
New PA system: $40,000

Glen Ogilvie
Electrical lighting: $40,404
Mechanical heating repairs: $450,000
Site paving: $135,000

Gloucester High School
New windows/exterior doors: $160,000

Robert Hopkins
PA system: $26,426

Terry Fox
PA system: $50,000

St. Matthew
Portables window replacements: $25,000
Boiler (one of three schools): $475,000 board-wide

St. Francis
Toilet partitions (one of seven schools): $150,000 board-wide

Brother André, Divine Infant
Gas conversion (two of three schools): $180,000 board-wide

The OCSB will decide how to spend $1.2 million in additional, unexpected funds on Tuesday, Jan. 27