(Posted 2:30 a.m., April 7)
Second Avalon school fails to rank high among public board's priorities
By Fred Sherwin
Orléans Online

The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board released a list of its top 10 capital funding priorities on Thursday and school board supporters in Avalon will be disappointed to learn that a second elementary school in their community is ranked well down the list.

In fact, it's ranked sixth behind a new elementary school in Kanata North which ranked number one, a $15 million addition to Longfields-Davidson Secondary School in Barrhaven and a $10 million addition to Earl of March Secondary School in Kanata.

The list, which was put together by board staff, will be submitted to the business services committee on Wednesday.

Committee members can either amend the list, or refer it to the committee of the whole where it will be debated by the entire board before final approval and submission to the Ontario Ministry of Eduction.

The board went through a similar process last year, before submitting a list of 15 projects in need of major capital funding. The province eventually approved funding for a new elementary school in Barrhaven which is scheduled to open in January 20.

The board was in the middle of putting together an updated capital priorities list in March when the ministry issued new guidelines for capital funding requests.

Among the guidelines was the requirement to rank each of the capital priorities while placing a focus on their "highest and most urgent accommodation priorities".

In 2011, the Ontario Ministry of Education received requests for over 650 projects submitted from across the province totalling more than $4.5 billion. Seventy-eight of those projects were approved and $635 million was allocated for their completion.

As limited as the funding was in 2011, the situation is even worse looking forward as the provincial government struggles to balance the budget by 2017-2018.

In a memo dated March 29, the Ministry of Education informed the province's school boards that only $325 million would be available for capital projects expected to open by 2015-16. That's roughly half the allocation provided in 2011 alone.

Projects that address accommodation pressures and/or projects undertaken in conjunction with the provision of full-day kindergarten are ministry priorities. Both are strong arguments for a second school in Avalon.

Avalon Public School is currently operating at about 130% capacity. It was built to accommodate 495 full-time students. It currently houses about 690 students, but about 70 students are in half-day kindergarten. The school is also scheduled to begin offering full-day kindergarten in 2014. Without a second school the target date is unrealistic.

(This story was made possible thanks to their generous support of our local business partners.)

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