British Columbia’s new Minister of Education Rob Fleming said his number-one priority in Richmond is ensuring the school district has the money it needs to restore class sizes to 2002 levels. From there, the minister said he will turn his attention to seismically upgrading schools.
“Our goal is to meet or do better than what the district is proposing,” said Fleming.
What the district is proposing, included in its $328.6-million five-year capital plan submitted in late June, is an ambitious seismic remediation plan for 11 schools at an estimated cost of $210 million.
“What’s exciting for me is we have a provincial government that’s on the same page with the district for the concerns that have been dominating our public education for a long time,” said Fleming, who personally called Board of Education Chair Debbie Tablotney to discuss Richmond School District goals, when he became the minister last month.
Tablotney said the call was a pleasant surprise relative to past ministers’ methods of communication. She said Fleming’s new NDP Ministry of Education still owes the district $3 million to fully fund new teachers under what the B.C. Liberals called the “Classroom Enhancement Fund,” which is actually just an order by the Supreme Court of Canada to restore class size and composition to 2002 levels, when such matters were illegally stripped from the teachers’ bargaining table by the government.
The district needs $30 million but has only received $27 million. Still, Tablotney said it’s enough to resume hiring teachers, after the district initially delayed hiring roughly one-third of the 310 new, full-time teachers it needs to pare down class sizes.
The district’s Director of Facilities Clive Mason has already submitted the district’s plan to the ministry to seismically upgrade 11 of the 25 schools in need of serious repair. If everything is funded and on schedule, the first schools estimated to be completed in mid-2021 will be: Ferris, Tomsett, Steves, Tait and Mitchell elementary schools, as well as Boyd secondary school. At the end of 2021 the district expects to complete: Bridge, Dixon, Gilmore, Lee and Whiteside. The five latter schools will be the biggest projects, all costing an estimated $24 million each.
Cook elementary school has already received the green light from the past B.C. Liberal government to receive $14 million in seismic upgrades. Former education minister Mike Bernier said the government had earmarked $2 billion during the next three years for capital projects, adding that he was committed to upgrading every school outside of Vancouver by 2025.
Richmond could begin another round of 11 school upgrades in 2021 and have 23 complete by 2025.
Mason told the News the district is limited in the number of upgrades it can do at once, as it would be impossible logistically to move so many students around as various wings to schools undergo repair.
As it stands, the district still needs to devise a plan to shuffle students between schools during repairs.
“We have a number of schools that need to be fixed. No one is thinking they’ll all get fixed at once. Capacity-wise you can only fix a few at a time. Our hope is to get the ball rolling... and funding commitments in place,” said Trustee Ken Hamaguchi, who is looking forward to a special seismic project office to be set up to streamline the process.
Meanwhile, the district is also tabling its plans for two major elementary school projects. First, Dover Park elementary will cost $24 million to build and could be completed as early as 2021. Next, a new school in the City Centre is expected to cost $71 million, of which $47 million will be for land acquisition.
It was thought the sale of Steveston High would pay for a new school, but Tablotney said Richmond’s hot real estate market has been devaluing the $41 million the district received in 2013. The district was also asked by the Liberals to take $1 million from the Steveston High pot to fund Cook.
Richmond also needs to expand Hamilton elementary at an estimated cost of $9 million. And Talmey elementary’s expansion requires a $7-million land purchase.
Fleming also said the new government would unclog a “backlog” of maintenance.
In Richmond, there are six projects (roofs, lighting etc.) worth a total of $5.6 million.
