While Christy Clark and the B.C. Liberals’ flip flops on a number of key issues — like welfare and disability rates and banning corporate and union donations — raised eyebrows this week, the Liberals seem to also be quietly changing their position on school closures.
One of B.C. Liberal Education Minister Mike Bernier’s favourite talking points when slamming the old, elected Vancouver School Board (VSB) was that it was spending $37 million on “empty classrooms.” The idea was that if we closed a bunch of schools, our funding problems would disappear.
It was nonsense, of course, and he went mum on that point once he dismissed us for not approving more budget cuts last year and replaced us with an appointed trustee.
That flip flop is evident in the VSB’s silence on school closures, save for a few vacant annexes that were already being closed by the elected board. If there was ever $37 million to be saved by closing schools (there wasn’t), Bernier and his appointed VSB trustee seem to have forgotten about it.
What a difference an election makes
Take a look at the $1.5 billion capital plan submission to government Turner is considering at a VSB planning and facilities committee meeting this week. You don’t have to if you don’t want to though — I did and I’ll tell you the important bits.
Here’s what’s most interesting about it. It references the elected board’s decision last fall to suspend the school closure process and notes that it presents some challenges. It does not, however, propose to reactivate the suspended closure process, which Dianne Turner, Bernier’s appointed trustee, has the power to do.
Rather it proposes proceeding with a different approach — one I and many others have been calling for all along: “right sizing” schools with excess capacity (according to government formulas with which I don’t agree) by rebuilding or renovating them to be smaller and more cost efficient, instead of closing some down and consolidating the rest.
That means that if government is pushing the district to reduce its overall capacity, it can simply replace large, seismically unsafe schools with smaller ones that meet the current and projected enrolment needs of their communities. Sound simple?
It makes sense to me and has all along. Instead of closing large schools with extra, unused classrooms and forcing students to relocate to other schools, replace the high-risk old buildings with their millions of dollars in deferred maintenance issues with new seismically safe, energy efficient smaller schools. We’ve done a few of these before — Queen Mary and Strathcona are two examples of the seismically upgraded school having significantly lower capacity than it did before.
The benefit is that it keeps the school community together and ensures all neighbourhoods have access to community schools within a reasonable distance from students’ homes.
What's changed?
I remember when Christy Clark was a CKNW radio host. For awhile CKNW ran a promo for Clark’s show that was a clip of her railing about Vancouver needing to close lots of schools — more than the five that were being considered back in 2010.
It’s been a constant theme since then. They pushed the VSB to close schools and hired EY twice — at a cost in the hundreds of thousands each time — to make the case for it. While I supported the closures of Maquinna, Henderson and Laurier annexes, as they were no longer needed to accommodate overflow from the main schools — closing schools like Gladstone and Britannia high schools was a terrible, community-damaging idea.
The Liberals wanted closures because they were a quick and cheap way to cross projects off the list and they would free up space that could be leased to private schools that lobby government through the Federation of Independent Schools Association.
Gladstone and Britannia were on a preliminary list of schools to be considered for closure by the VSB last fall, along with ten elementary schools. The board voted in October to suspend the process after strong public opposition and several senior staff members went on leave.
The B.C. Liberals were all for the VSB pushing ahead on that when they had an elected board to make the tough choices for them. That's all changed for two reasons — there's no elected board to take the blame and they took a beating in Metro Vancouver ridings on election day, and they're fighting for their survival now.
The closure flip flop is great news
Now Turner can make a case for moving forward with more seismic projects without pressure to close schools, regardless of which party is in government. That means not disrupting communities and putting students and families through another round of painful closure meetings. Amen to that.
Here’s what’s in the plan
In most years the education ministry tells school boards to submit five-year capital-plan requests. They give detailed instructions and boards respond with their priority projects. Sometimes a few of them get funded, but under the B.C. Liberal government, most don’t, although they’re all much-needed projects. Some eventually get approved, although it can take many years. Think of it as a kind of wish list, for now at least.
Over half the VSB’s schools are still assessed as “high risk” and have yet to get a funding commitment from the province, 12 years after the B.C. Liberal government promised they’d all be upgraded by 2020. The means the VSB has a big ask for seismic projects — by far the biggest of any district. I wrote about Christy Clark’s broken seismic promises from her 2013 campaign here.
The VSB’s proposed 2018/19 capital plan comprises five categories: seismic upgrade and/or replacement projects; new schools or expansions; the “school enhancement program,” which includes upgrades to electrical and mechanical systems, washrooms and issues affecting health and safety; building envelope repairs or upgrades; and the province’s carbon-neutral capital program which funds projects that reduce carbon emissions.
The seismic project section includes ten top priority projects that don't have funding commitments yet: Hamber, Bayview, Lloyd George, Thompson, Begbie, Point Grey, Weir, Killarney, Cavell and Wolfe (to view the full, 30-school list see “attachment B” in this document).
The request for new projects includes five new schools totaling over $212 million — starting with funding for a 320-seat elementary school in Coal Harbour in the plan’s first year, then a 510-seat school for the Olympic Village in the second year, followed in the third year by a 1000-seat replacement building for King George Secondary school downtown, then a new, 510-seat elementary school at UBC in year four and a 510-seat school for the south-east Fraserlands in the plan’s fifth year.
Bear in mind that even if government comes through on all projects as requested, they will take several years to design and build once funding is secured.
The plan also requests funding from the province’s carbon-neutral capital program to upgrade heat plants at Hastings and Roberts elementary schools.
All without closing more schools, apparently.
A lot may change in coming weeks and months with so much uncertainty at the provincial level. But the NDP and Greens are even less likely to expect closures than the Liberals seem to be. That's a bit of good new for Vancouver communities.