WEYBURN - During a recent board meeting, members of the Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division discussed the struggles that smaller school divisions have with the limits of the Preventive Maintenance and Repair (PMR) budget.
The board celebrated the announcement of a new portable classroom for St. Michael School. Construction of the unit will begin in July.
“We all recognize that a portable classroom is a short-term solution in some situations, but it’s better than nothing,” said MLA Michael Weger, who was a guest at the school board meeting.
“The government does recognize that the cost of building is going up year after year after year. So this year, the funding for the portables was higher than it’s ever been in the past and they’re working really hard to try to ensure that it covers the full cost and boards don’t have to go into reserves to offset the cost,” said Chad Fingler, superintendent for school operations for Holy Family.
Fingler added that the school division would appreciate support or any lobbying by the MLA on behalf of small school divisions. “They have the major capital grants, minor capital application grants, and the threshold for the minor capital grants at the bottom end is a million dollars. Things like roof projects and some of those things that are $600,000 to $800,000 don’t meet the minimum threshold of minor capital projects, and we are being asked to use our Preventive Maintenance and Repair (PMR), which is only $250,000.”
“So three consecutive years of 100 per cent of our PMR money, which is meant to support all five schools, has to go into one roof project. We have nothing left to maintain the schools, and we have no access to funding any other way,” said Fingler.
He wanted to know if there was a way to lobby for a sliding scale to the minor capital projects budget for smaller school divisions.
“I feel there’s an inequity in our ability to apply for the minor or major funding because of our size.”
In the last five years, Holy Family had to commit to roofing projects at St. Mary’s School, Sacred Heart School and St. Augustine School. “That’s almost $1.5 to $1.6 million of roofs on a $250,000 PMR budget per year. It’s hard,” said Fingler.
“Our schools are all old, so they cost a lot of money to keep going,” said Bruno Tuchscherer, board chair for Holy Family.
There is a proposed major project on the horizon for Holy Family in partnership with Southeast Cornerstone Public School Division, for a capital project in Estevan. The proposed joint-school program would house students from three Cornerstone schools and two Holy Family schools in the same building.
“It would be a cost-saving project in the end, because we would not be fixing old schools all the time,” added Tuchscherer.
