The facilities department for Northern Lights Public Schools (NLPS) is facing a significant deficit for 2020.
During the board of trustees meeting on Nov. 13, director of facilities Leah Rout explained what caused the $1.3-million shortfall in their budget.
“With the new insurance premiums, that’s now 15 per cent of my budget instead of six per cent, a huge increase,” she detailed.
Finding the funds to address the shortfall was a question Rout has been trying to find an answer to.
“I’m just wondering, where does that money come from? From instructional dollars? I don’t know if that’s fair, or that I will feel good about taking money out of instruction to keep our buildings where they need to be, but if we don’t, then what happens? The buildings fall a part, they’re cold, they’re hot, and we start losing kids to somewhere else. We need those dollars, but I just don’t know what’s fair and where it should come from,” she expressed.
According to NLPS secretary-treasurer Paula Elock, this isn’t an issue unique to Northern Lights.
“It’s not just our school division. It’s most school divisions in Alberta, I think 46 out of 61 are experiencing significant increases in insurance as a result of floods and fires throughout the province,” she explained.
Although the maintenance department has been operating with a deficit for several years, Elock noted it usually hovers around $700,000.
NLPS will be looking at $7.2-million in funding for facilities in the 2019/20 school year, however, expenses are sitting at $8.5-million.
When it comes to the must-do work for schools, including exterior repairs on Ardmore School and Duclos School, that total price tag will cost the division $1.9-million.
Upgrading the exterior key system at Duclos School, Glendon, and Nelson Heights Middle School were among the should-do projects for 2020. Those would set NLPS back $900,000.
The nice to-dos, such as painting areas at H.E. Bourgoin Middle School and Cold Lake Outreach School, would cost around $980,000.
Due to the deficit, Rout stressed the funds just aren’t available.
“What we’re doing this year is putting a band-aid on our buildings,” she said. “That’s pretty much all we can do. We have maintenance staff… and we could use the work, but we really don’t have enough supplies to do much ourselves. We have to contract a bunch of that out, the money just isn’t there.”
Another impact Rout went over was the province eliminating the Student Temporary Employment Program (STEP), which was a provincial initiative that covered half of the cost of hiring a high school or post-secondary student for up to 37.5 hours per week for four to 16-weeks.
“In the past, we’ve hired as many as 10 summer students. But, with the STEP programming being eliminated, we’re not going to be able to hire that many anymore moving forward,” Rout said, adding there will only be three this upcoming year, with two in the Bonnyville and Cold Lake area and one in Lac La Biche.
“The problem with only having two people cutting grass in each area is we’re going to have longer wait times between grass cutting, we’re going to have longer grass, we’re going to have grass left on the field, and no time to rake it. If I have to put some of my journeymen out there cutting grass, the price of cutting grass goes through the roof, our other projects and our work orders suffer, and I just don’t think it’s a good use of bodies.”
Rout stressed the capital and operational funding are insufficient to upgrade aging buildings and to improve with new technology. The department will be forced to do more with less, and will struggle to keep up with less staff and aging equipment.
Board chair Arlene Hrynyk said, “We certainly understand the challenge that your department and all departments are facing, and we will continue to advocate on behalf of Northern Lights schools… We’ve watched the crippling of some of the grants over the years, and… we’ll continue to advocate until the end of the new funding formula to address some of these inequalities in terms of governances. We’re certainly taking that voice forward in all of our opportunities, and we’ll keep doing so.”
