Quebec schools anxious to use new government cash on repairs

If you've got children in Quebec's public school system, there's a good chance they spend their days in a building badly in need of repair.

With new money from Quebec, school board officials are now hoping to make tangible improvements.

The Liberal government has set aside just over $1 billion in its latest budget for education infrastructure, along with a five per cent increase in overall spending on education.

Upgrades are badly needed.

More than half of Quebec's 2,700 preschools, elementary and high schools are in poor or very poor condition, according to the latest assessment by the provincial government.

The total cost of repairing Quebec's entire network of public school buildings — from preschool to vocational schools — is now pegged at $3.3 billion, compared to $1.8 billion estimated in last year's budget.

That dramatic jump is, at least in part, due to more detailed inspections carried out over the past year, which gave the province a more accurate assessment of the repairs required, the government said.

On a scale from A to E, preschools and elementary schools, as well as high schools, got an average rating of D, meaning they're in poor condition.

In total, 55 per cent of preschools and primary schools failed to get a passing grade of C. As for high schools, 47 per cent didn't get a passing grade.

Long road from budget to repairs

Jennifer Maccarone, president of the Quebec English School Boards Association, said the extra money is welcome.

"We have buildings that are sorely in need of repair," said Maccarone, who is also head of the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board.

It can take several years, she noted, from the time provincial funding is granted to getting the repair work done. Maccarone said that's further complicated by how little time there is to undertake the work while the schools are vacated over the summer.

"The reality is that in the education sector, we have a short period of time to accomplish major changes, especially with the two-week construction holiday," she said. 

Laval Senior Academy, in the Laval district of Chomedey, is among the schools awaiting an upgrade. It is receiving $1.9 million from last year's budget, for renovations to be carried out in the summer of 2019.  

"It's a school that needs a lot of love right now," said principal Nathalie Rollin. "In the hallways, the lockers are getting old. The paint needs to be done. You'll see some cracks in the walls."

The money, however, isn't going towards such esthetic improvements. It will used to repair the windows and roof, and to remove pyrite from the walls.

'We've been waiting years for this'

The funding boost from the province is also being welcomed by teachers unions, although they argue the extra cash in an election year doesn't make up for the belt-tightening earlier in the Couillard government's mandate.

Sebastien Joly, head of the Quebec Provincial Teachers Association, said teachers and students have had to put up with rundown classrooms — and worse.

"The more you let [the buildings] go, the more expensive it becomes," Joly said.

"We've been waiting so many years for this."

Quebec Education Minister Sébastien Proulx acknowledged last week, after the budget was released, that many schools are in poor shape. He said the latest budget, which saw the government boost overall spending, will help rectify that.

"I've always said, there are schools that are lacking love in Quebec," he told reporters.

"We need to be able to reverse the trend, to put an end to these dilapidated schools."