Each year, each school district in the province asks the government to fund a list of capital improvement projects, then waits to see which ones get approved.
Despite it being an annual submission, it’s called the Five-Year Capital Plan, and Campbell River School District’s current one has been submitted to the Ministry of Education.
This year’s submission contains 12 items.
“There are a lot of mechanical upgrades,” Secretary-Treasurer Kevin Patrick told the board at this week’s public meeting in asking for their approval of the list.
Those mechanical upgrades include boiler replacements at Ocean Grove, École des Deux Mondes and École Willow Point elementary schools at around $120,000 each, along with a major series of mechanical upgrades to Carihi Secondary.
The district asked for almost $1.5 million for the mechanical upgrade to Carihi last year. That request did not get approved, so they broke the request down into three phases this time around. The first phase would see Blocks C and D of the school mechanically upgraded in 2018-19 if approved, followed by E Block in 2019-20 and F Block in 2021-22.
The other major request in this year’s Capital Plan is $688,000 for the replacement of Quadra Elementary School’s roof, also slated to be done in two phases.
Southgate Middle School’s roof is also in need of work, based on the Capital Plan, to the tune of $390,500.
Patrick says out of the 12 items on the list, the board should expect somewhere between two and four of them to be approved.
“We’ve put the application in, and we may get funded for two – or in the best year, four – of these projects. We’ll find out in September whether or not we’re approved and we’ll bring that back to the board,” Patrick said.