December 13, 2006

SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION

Alberta’s five-year plan for school construction

SUZANNE ZWARUN

Correspondent

After months and months in the making, the provincial government has finally come up with its five-year infrastructure blueprint for school construction.

The Schools for Tomorrow plan would see $3.17 billion spent building and renovating schools in Alberta.

Unfortunately the plan was released just as the government that asked for it last spring was about to change and there is no assurance a new Conservative premier and, probably, a new education minister will go ahead with three and a quarter billion dollars worth of overdue construction.

Education Minister Gene Zwozdesky ‘s five-year capital strategy would see 82 new and replacement schools built at a cost of $1.4 billion. In addition the 70-page Schools for Tomorrow reports calls for 71 modernization and preservation projects worth $900 million, 40 new modular structures and an investment of $520 million to be spent on maintenance costs.

Calgary would get 18 new schools, 11 in the public system and seven in the separate system, plus 146 modulars. Calgary has already been given approval for seven new schools to be built this school year, five in the next school year and four in the school year after that.

Zwozdesky paid particular attention to Alberta’s construction labour shortage in his report. He allotted $50 million to funding of equipment for the career technology studies program over five years.

When he was a teacher in the late 1960s and 1970s, schools had “great industrial arts facilities”, says Zwozdesky. Then industrial arts departments in schools fell out of favour. He wants to change that. “We see the need to spring back so we’re giving $50 million to industrial arts to encourage young people into the trades.”

Zwozdesky, who had been promising all summer that Schools for Tomorrow, would be finished “soon” and “very very soon”, indicated only two weeks before its release that no decisions would be made until after the Tory leadership race was over.

He’s just trying to ensure himself a job in the new government, opposition MLAs jeered when Zwozdesky released his long awaited report just after the advance poll was held to choose a new premier. But Zwozdesky promises to fight for his report even if he doesn’t remain education minister. And he’s hopeful of action. He acknowledges the report calls for a huge amount of infrastructure spending—the bill would have been over $5 billion if he had approved every project school boards wanted—but noted that education was a top priority for all the Conservative leadership candidates.

Schools for Tomorrow has to fit into the larger picture of government spending under way, Zwozdesky says, but “if we’re going to maintain education as a top priority, we must look at how this particular report can address aging infrastructure and the growth pressures of booming Calgary, Edmonton, Airdrie, Chestermere, Grande Prairie, Fort McMurray and Red Deer.”

At the end of August, the provincial government anted up $303 million in infrastructure funding to help tackle the problem of crumbling schools.

That included $34 million for 130 steel-framed modular classrooms. Schools have been using the steel-framed structures rather than wood ones since 2005 because they last longer and can be fitted directly to existing schools.

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