Brandon’s aging schools take financial toll

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This article was published 24/01/2024 (604 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

She is one sweet old lady. École New Era School, at 116 years old, stands as the most senior and still functioning school in Brandon.

Brandon School Division administration presented a sobering fact to trustees Monday night — 71 per cent of the division’s 21 original school buildings are more than 50 years old and the BSD is facing increasing amounts of repairs and costs to maintain them.

“The fact that the schools continue to be useful is a testament to the efforts of the facilities department, maintenance staff, school custodial staff and the budgeting decisions of the board of trustees over time,” Mathew Gustafson, superintendent and CEO of the BSD, said during his presentation to the board.

“Through corrective and preventative maintenance approaches, the division will be able to sustain useful facilities for the foreseeable future, but with a higher anticipated cost,” Gustafson said.

Jaime Lombaert echoes those sentiments. The principal of École New Era School said the original part of the school is beautiful, adding the division and maintenance staff have done a great job preserving its beauty.

“It’s a very nice school,” Lombaert said. “The older part has these big, beautiful windows. When we had the addition put on — that was the gym — the library moved into the old gym and it has these huge windows. All the teachers want to teach on that side. They love the way it feels.

“The addition was built in 1963 and just doesn’t have the same character.”

Many of the older schools have received additions like New Era. The BSD so far has built 26 additions to Brandon schools, adding gyms, classrooms, band rooms and space for home economics, life skills and more. In 2012, the BSD started to add modular classrooms. The BSD currently has 13 modulars, which have a 25-year life expectancy.

What the BSD currently spends most of its capital budget on is corrective or reactive maintenance, doing what has to be done for the school to function, like repairing plumbing leaks. Bigger capital projects — like a new roof at École Harrison, which will cost more than $3.4 million when it’s done — are largely paid by Manitoba Education as part of the capital infrastructure renewal program.

Other capital projects this year include a boiler room and boiler replacement at J.R. Reid School, which will cost $2.8 million, and a boiler repair at Kirkcaldy Heights that will cost $125,00 or more.

Anything the provincial government doesn’t cover comes out of the BSD operational budget, which is only 1.3 per cent or $1.5 million of the division’s total budget.

Earl Oxford is currently the second-most senior building in the division, at 96 years old. Gustafson told the board that the ages of the majority of BSD schools align closely with the “baby boom” Brandon experienced with the rest of Canada after the Second World War ended in 1945. Twelve of the current BSD schools were built after Brandon experienced huge surges in population during the 1950s and into the 1970s.

“I think as the buildings age, we will have things that we have to address,” Gustafson said. “We do have roofs, we have foundations and we work on the windows. That’s going to happen. But I think if you look at the buildings, and we look at New Era or Earl Oxford, the work that our maintenance facilities and our custodial staff have done has kept our buildings in good shape.”

It seems history repeats itself. In the Sept. 5, 1959 edition, The Brandon Sun reported: “In the past 10 years the Brandon school population had doubled, jumping from 2,400 in 1949 to 4,800 in 1959.”

The board of trustees that year had a big headache. Classrooms were bursting at the seams with often more than 30 children in a room. Many were taught in basement classrooms. The community at the time was considering the addition of two new high schools and trying to justify the cost. Neelin High School was already standing, having been built in 1957, while Vincent Massey was approved by the BSD and built in 1960. Harrison High School (now École Harrison, a K-8 school) followed a year later in 1961. The total cost for the two high schools in 1959 was $785,000.

In this school year, the BSD is facing a similar problem that the board in 1959 faced: overcrowded classrooms and steep enrolment increases over the last two years.

Trustee Jim Murray, who was acting chair for the Jan. 22 meeting, said the division does have an “aging schools fund” currently sitting at $52,000. He said trustees would be discussing adding to this fund, in light of the long list of aging schools, in budget deliberations in February.

Gustafson said New Era and the other older buildings are still in good shape, but updating them can be challenging. He said the current administration building is not wheelchair accessible and new workplace safety rules require the BSD to install eyewash stations in every building that uses chemicals.

“Because our custodians use cleaning supplies everywhere, the eyewash stations now are required to have mixing valves so that the temperature (is correct),” Gustafson said. “None of our buildings when they were built had (eyewash stations) except for Maryland Park. We have a plan that for the next four to five years we’ll have to spend $45,000 per year, just getting the eyewash stations.

“It’s not always just the building structure needing attention. There’s also adapting buildings to fit the current context for a building built in the 1900s.”

The BSD administration building on Sixth Street in Brandon is also soon to mark a century. While the province will fund or help cover the costs of building replacement or maintenance, the administration building and the facility and transportation building are responsibilities of the BSD.

The board of trustees will consider this and more in their budget deliberations next month.

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