Make up for ‘decades’ of neglect, CSDM urges
Quebec’s largest school board is in dire straits.
That’s what the Commission scolaire de Montréal, its teachers’ union and parents’ committee said while addressing the media Thursday.
Heads of the three groups described a desperate situation at the CSDM: one where hundreds of special needs students are being left behind, where schools are falling apart and job cuts are threatening the quality of education for thousands of kids.
This year the Education Department set aside $150 million in repair costs and another $50 million to expand infrastructure in the CSDM’s network of 190 schools.
But CSDM chairperson Catherine Harel-Bourdon says the government needs to maintain those funding levels for the next 10 years to compensate for “decades of neglect” in infrastructure spending. She addressed reporters from an east Montreal office on Adam St., where all three CSDM schools are shut down because the buildings aren’t up to code.
Harel-Bourdon says the vast majority of the school board’s 225 buildings are in disrepair.
“We don’t want people to pity us, we just want to find solutions,” she said. “We need a long-term plan, not just something for this year and next, we need to know what the next decade is going to look like.”
Harel-Bourdon will meet with parents and teachers next week to devise a list of demands the school board will present during the Education Department’s pre-budgetary consultations in November.
The CSDM’s financial woes have put it at odds with the Liberal government in the past. Last year, an audit by the Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton firm found that, by 2014, the CSDM had racked up a $73.1-million deficit.
The audit also found that, among other problems, the CSDM has some of the province’s lowest high school graduation rates. A previous audit, conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, pointed to similar problems.
Catherine Renaud, who heads the CSDM’s teachers’ union, says the board faces a set of challenges unlike any other in Quebec. An internal study suggests that one in four children at the CSDM are students with special needs and that the board would need to hire another 265 employees to meet that demand.
“We’re literally picking and choosing which kids will get resources and which won’t,” said Renaud. “We’re putting the success of our students at risk, they aren’t getting a fair shot to succeed.”
Harel-Bourdon said the board, which has 112,000 students, had to cannibalize $25 million from other budget lines last year to invest in special education. Among the CSDM’s other obstacles, she said, is the fact that 50 per cent of its students do not count French as a first language and about two-thirds live at or below the poverty line.
“We’re the school board that’s at the heart of (Quebec’s) efforts to integrate immigrant children and welcome those families,” Harel-Bourdon said. “We have challenges that the government needs to recognize.”
Mélanie Taillefer, the head of the CSDM’s parents’ committee, said families are facing an increasing financial burden.
“School fees are going up, daycare fees too,” she said. “Many of these families, they struggle to put food on the table and so any additional costs will be a huge burden for them . ... We’re here together today to unite our forces, to let the government know that there’s a serious need here.”
In a statement on Thursday, Education Minister Sébastien Proulx’s press attaché, Marie Deschamps, said the minister acknowledges that there are education realities that are specific to the Montreal area.
“Solutions put forward in one region shouldn’t necessarily be favoured in others,” Deschamps said.
Deschamps said the minister will be meeting with Montreal partners in the coming weeks during public consultation meetings on educational success, and will be “attentive to the proposals that will be put forward.”
We’re putting the success of our students at risk, they aren’t getting a fair shot to succeed.