Public board priorities are elementary
Orléans, south Ottawa top school list
Elementary schools should be the primary focus this fall as provincial money is sought for capital projects, suggest staff with the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.
Three new elementary schools — one in Orléans and two in growing parts of south Ottawa — top a preliminary list of priorities from staff, taken from a list of projects that didn’t receive funding last year.
School boards that want capital funding from the Ministry of Education have until the end of October to submit as many as eight projects for consideration.
At the same time, OttawaCarleton board staff are working on a new “framework” to guide decisions around new schools and other capital projects.
Last year, weeks of acrimonious debate over the 2012 capital priorities list ended with trustees’ agreeing that staff, in advance of such discussions in the future, must develop a criterion to be used in determining the priority of schools that need renovations or rebuilds, as well as the need for new schools or additions.
The aim now is to come up with a “systematic approach” that moves ahead with a strategic plan and “encourages acceptance of these funding allocation decisions by both the Ministry and the community,” according to a staff report from June.
The emphasis, the report states, “is on clarity, keeping the decision-making process and the prioritization results easy to understand, and therefore clearly supportable.”
As that work continues — a report on the capital planning process is expected to go to the board early next year — staff propose submitting to the ministry the remaining eight priorities that didn’t receive funding on a list of 16 projects approved by the board last year.
There’s one ranking revision that would bump a proposed new elementary school in Findlay Creek up to third on the list (it would otherwise have been fifth).
Opening a new school in that community “forms an integral part of the plan for accommodating full-day kindergarten (FDK) programs at sending schools,” which include Avalon Public School, Barrhaven Public School/Jockvale Elementary School and Elizabeth Park Public School, staff state in a new report to trustees ahead of a meeting on Sept. 17.
A new school in Avalon is cited as the top priority. The existing Avalon Public School already needs 12 portables, staff say, and that number is expected to reach 19 by 2015, based on projected enrolments and the effects of fullday kindergarten.
And the planned opening of a new school in Half Moon Bay in 2015 had been part of a larger accommodation review in south Nepean two years ago that included temporary revisions to grade structures at Cedarview Middle School and Barrhaven Public School, staff state. Those revisions are scheduled to end after the 2014-2015 school year, according to the report.
“[N]eeds at the elementary panel are critical at this point in time,” it states. Should funding be delayed for any of the schools, “some form of interim accommodation measure may be required, a circumstance which is difficult and impactful on our students and school communities.”
A report with formal recommendations for the list is to go to a meeting on Oct. 1, and the board is expected to make a final decision on Oct. 22.
Meanwhile, Ottawa Catholic School Board staff recommend new junior kindergarten-to-Grade 6 schools in south Nepean and Kanata North be its priorities for a funding submission.
To be eligible for ministry funding, projects must open no later than the 2016-2017 school year. The ministry has said it will prioritize projects that involve “joint-use” or collaboration between boards, and those that accommodate growth and full-day kindergarten needs.
There are “verbal indications” that the ministry might announce funding decisions in spring 2014, Ottawa-Carleton staff state.