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Edmonton school boards look for repair fund stability, new buildings in provincial budget

Edmonton's public school board wants to get off the roller coaster ride of fluctuating public infrastructure funding — a problem highlighted in a recent provincial blue-ribbon panel report.

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Edmonton’s public school board wants to get off the roller-coaster ride of fluctuating public infrastructure funding — a problem highlighted in a recent provincial blue-ribbon panel report.

Depending on oil prices and government whims, the school division gets anywhere between $15 million and $30 million a year to tackle its nearly $757-million backlog of deferred building maintenance work.

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“It’s a very unpredictable funding model, which doesn’t allow us to get the efficiencies you get if you plan ahead and you can bundle projects and you can do long-term tenders,” Lorne Parker, assistant superintendent of infrastructure for the school division, said earlier this week. “You could realize some really significant savings from a predictable funding model.”

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Frustrated with the school division’s inability to plan upgrades and unable to set property taxes, southwest Edmonton trustee Nathan Ip last spring urged his board colleagues to ask the government to change how it allots school repair money.

School boards are the only locally elected authorities in Alberta without multi-year block grants from government to address their infrastructure needs, said a report to the board earlier this year.

‘Block’ funding could cut costs

In June, trustees asked government for predetermined, five-year blocks of cash, free from ties to specific construction projects. Administrators calculated if the division spent two per cent of its buildings’ replacement value on repairs each year, they could push a daunting backlog of crucial repairs to $0 by 2035. If funding continues in unpredictable fits and spurts, the deferred maintenance price tag is projected to balloon to $1.37 billion by 2037.

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Based on the division’s stock of buildings — more than half of which are older than 50 years — the board is asking government for $82 million a year. The board proposed the money could also be used to replace or modernize schools, which is currently funded using a separate mechanism.

The MacKinnon panel report on Alberta government spending, released earlier this month, said the province’s capital spending since 1990 has been erratic. Government should “stabilize and rationalize” how it spends on maintenance and renewal of public buildings, the panel recommended. It also said the province will have to “substantially reduce capital spending” to balance the provincial budget by 2022-23.

Construction of several public and Catholic schools began in Edmonton in 2015.
Construction of several public and Catholic schools began in Edmonton in 2015. Photo by Brady McDonald /Edmonton Journal

Public board chairwoman Trisha Estabrooks was happy to read the panel recommendation about stabilizing funding. The division is also anxious to see funding for a $79-million high school in the Meadows in this fall’s provincial budget.

Colin Aitchison, press secretary for the education minister, thanked the public school board for its input on capital funding. School construction funding will be announced as part of the fall budget, he said Thursday.

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Earlier this month, Finance Minister Travis Toews said building schools as enrolment growth climbs is important.

In June, Edmonton Public predicted enrolment would grow 3.2 per cent this school year from last year, to 105,127 pupils. Schools do a formal headcount on Sept. 30.

Suburban Catholic schools scrunched

Edmonton Catholic Schools had projected a more modest 1.4-per-cent growth this year, so leaders were surprised to tally 44,571 students in an early count — up 3.4 per cent from last year.

John Fiacco, assistant superintendent of educational planning, said Wednesday there are 934 K-9 students in Windermere’s St. John XXIII Catholic School, which puts it at 114-per-cent capacity. There’s no room to add more modular classrooms, he said.

“The scary part about that is 60 per cent of the residential lots remain to be developed.”

No. 1 on the division’s construction request list is a new $38.7-million K-9 school in Keswick for 900 students.

In west Edmonton, Bishop Motiuk K-9 school is also over capacity with 989 students. Mother Margaret Mary High School in Leger is projected to be at 114 per cent capacity by 2023, Fiacco said, and Holy Trinity High School in Mill Woods is already at 119-per-cent capacity.

To tackle the division’s $227-million deferred building maintenance backlog, Fiacco isn’t sold on the block funding model Edmonton Public is pursuing. The Catholic division has received more than two per cent of building replacement costs during the past few years, he said.

Board chairwoman Laura Thibert is also anxious to see how the MacKinnon report recommendations influence school capital funding.

“That’s our number one priority, to make sure that schools get built,” she said.

jfrench@postmedia.com

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