Board spends millions on schools

June 20, 2018

By Sarah Sobanski

Hastings Prince Edward District School Board has committed a third of its building and renewal project funding to North Hastings schools.

Almost $14 million in North Hastings school infrastructure needs were prioritized by the school board for the 2017-’18 school year. According to a document provided to Bancroft This Week on the northern building projects, the projects are a part of $40 million of the board’s school year budget.

“Due to the number, size and complexity of projects, it is anticipated that not all projects will be completed within a single year,” stated the document. “Throughout the year, it may be necessary for projects to be added or deleted to reflect priorities as they arise.”

It also stated, “For a second year in a row, a significant portion of the funding provided by the Ministry of Education has been re-aligned to address renewal needs for major building components and systems. This includes the building substructure (e.g. foundation, basement walls), the building shell/superstructure (e.g. roof, exterior walls, and exterior windows) and systems (e.g. HVAC, plumbing, fire protection) that have been identified as having reached end-of-life.”

York River Public School received the largest portion of the funding for renewals at $11.5 million. New projects for the school include floor renewals, sanitary waste removal renewals, air distribution renewals and more. They will be moving to compare dumpster sizes for the needed renovations to come to help remove the waste products quickly and safely, alongside working on the logistics for the rest of the work at hand.

The board is putting nearly $1 million into North Hastings High School. As reported by the paper last week, more than half of that will go to a cold water main retrofit. The rest will go towards fire system, floors, lighting renewals and more. It also includes $35,000 in upgrades for the school’s tech shop.

Bird’s Creek Public School is undergoing $564,000 worth of renewal projects. The rest is going to infrastructure needs such as hall baseboard renewal and lighting renewals.

Coe Hill Public School is undergoing $377,000 worth of renewal projects. The funds will go to infrastructures such as classroom floors and plumbing, lighting, and interior door renewals. They may look towards a company like Enviro Building Solutions for structural needs, and construct a stand-alone modular building for the children to use during the different types of renovation.

Maynooth Public School is having $327,000 go to renewals of its interior and exterior doors, windows and lighting renewal. This includes on-going renewals of its exterior walls and ceilings.

Hermon Public School is spending $152,000 on upgrades including on an $80,000 new well.

Each school besides Maynooth has carried over a project to survey and replace their boiler systems at $50,000 each, although having revisited this research, they found they may have been able to find boiler sales for slightly cheaper than this. Each school except North Hastings School and Coe Hill Public School are investing $10,000 into recabling their WiFi.

Spokesperson for the board Kerry Donnell said school needs were determined through work with each schools principal.