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By Adrian Nieoczym
Okanagan schools will have to make do with less maintenance and could see job losses, after the the provincial government cancelled $110 million worth of annual facility grants it gives to B.C. schools.
For the Central Okanagan School District, that means a loss of $3.6 million for the 2009/10 school year.
The grants, which the government has handed out on top of school districts’ core funding since 1988, cover “those types of ongoing maintenance issues that have to do with keeping the buildings in good repair, keeping them hygenic, keeping them clean, keeping them safe,” said Rolli Cacchioni, chairman of the Central Okanagan Board of Education.
This year’s grant would have covered projects like re-refooing KLO Middle School, replacing the heating and ventilation system at Springvalley Middle School and paving the parking lot at Okanagan Mission Secondary School.
School districts normally hear what their facility grants year will be in the spring. But this year, the government put off a decision until late last week, when it said there would be no grants for the first time in 21 years. The Central Okanagan School District counts on the grant money in its budgeting process and plans out its maintenance projects on a five-year basis. The district has already spent $1.5 million that it was expecting to get this year.
“It’s very disconcerting, the fact that we try to do our best to do long range strategic planning,” said Cacchioni. “And then to have the money yanked at the last moment and we’ve already expended $1.5 million in doing repairs and maintenance that were necessary, so we’re going to have to find that money somewhere else in the budget.”
Cacchioni confirmed the possibility of layoffs. “There’s a possibility that some of the people working in operations, we may have to terminate,” he said.
He added that school districts did not expect to lose their maintenance funding. ”There was no reason to think they were going to be suspended because good sense tells you you need to keep the buildings in good repair, otherwise you pay in the long run for it,” he said.
adrian@kelowna.com
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the Liberal Government new about all this long before the spring election. I wish there was some way that we could recall the liberal government and elect a new one.
ever since the election the Liberals have been cutting funding to school, and now they also want to make an HST.
i am sorry but this is not right. i mean in the election platform that the liberals ran on did they not say they would increase funding to school. from what i have seen they have cut almost 10 million in funding to school. that is a lot of money when it comes to schooling kids.
Thank god i am going to be putting my kid into private school when he gose up and if i can do that i will me back to alberta where the schooling is better then BC
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