School gym policies a mess What the survey found

A long-awaited report on community use of school gymnasiums fails to use the one word that the 97 pages overwhelmingly describe: the situation is a mess.

The report to Education Minister Nancy Allan outlines a confusing mix of policies, availability, and costs of community access to school facilities, access that all too often is difficult to get or absent altogether.

And it shows the same confusing and problem-plagued mix when it comes to school use of community facilities.

The survey of school division superintendents, school principals, community recreation commissions and municipalities found contradictory data over essential joint-use agreements -- schools and municipalities had widely divergent beliefs on whether they have deals in place to get access to each other's facilities.

But Allan says that she's determined to bring school divisions and municipalities together and hammer out a uniform policy on access and fees by the time school starts the day after Labour Day.

"Absolutely -- we want to have the rules in place by September," Allan said in an interview.

Several years in the making, the report was launched through a task force created by Allan's predecessor as education minister, Peter Bjornson.

"We need to work with school divisions to ensure community organizations and parents have access to gyms," Allan said. "There are expectations here to make this a transparent process."

Allan expects school divisions to have gym use policies on their websites by the fall.

"We need school divisions to modernize their rules and harmonize them," she said. "We don't want school divisions to make a profit."

The 97 pages suggest that pulling everything together by September could be a challenge.

There is far more demand for school gyms than schools could accommodate, but also some consensus that the schools' own after-school programming needs have limited the gym availability for other users.

There is no uniformity of rules about supervision or about requiring a custodian to be present, about how precious hours are allotted to community users, or about who has to pay to use a school gym and how much. Very few school gyms are available weekends, over the summer, and during break weeks within the school year.

Use of school equipment is a big issue -- some schools allow outside groups to use school equipment, but parents who've fundraised to buy that equipment complain it can be damaged or go missing.

Conversely, schools said they need far greater access during the school day to community pools, arenas, and other outside facilities, preferably at no cost, and with financial help to transport students.

It's especially troubling to inner-city schools, said the report: "Some respondents from inner-city schools further indicated that the impact of usage fees was particularly taxing to their financial resources, as their students' families did not have the means to make contributions to cover usage fees imposed by community facilities."

Pembina Trails could be a model for gym use transparency -- its website shows gym use throughout the year for each school in the division, listing users hour-by-hour for each day of the week. If you want to know who has the gym in Bairdmore School at 8 p.m. on a Tuesday, that information is listed.

Sorting out the situation isn't helped by the provincewide response to the study's survey, whose roots go back to the Healthy Kids, Healthy Futures task force formed in 2004 that called for greater school physical activity to combat an epidemic of childhood obesity and lifestyle health problems.

Only 24 of the 38 school divisions' superintendents responded; among the missing, Seven Oaks and Pembina Trails.

Less than half the province's public school principals responded, including no principals at all in Brandon, Frontier and Lord Selkirk school divisions.

Responses came from 34 of 52 recreation commissions, but from only 31 of 65 municipalities.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

SOME of the key findings of the province-wide survey of Manitoba's schools and municipalities on user fees and policies related to community use of schools and school use of municipal facilities, submitted by Vancouver consultant Canadian Council on Learning to Education Minister Nancy Allan:

"Overall, there was more school need and community demand than could be accommodated by school facilities. There was agreement among principals, superintendents, and representatives of municipalities and recreation commissions that the demand for school-based facilities exceeded the availability of space and that community use of school facilities was limited by the school's own programming needs, both during and outside regular school hours.

"School use of community facilities was cited as a challenge for schools due to prohibitive costs related to usage fees and transportation, time conflicts, and availability of space.

"Other key findings include strong agreement on the need for developing and implementing facility use agreements, ideally joint-use agreements, between schools or school divisions and municipalities or recreation commissions containing clear and explicit procedures and policies around key issues such as usage fees and costs, prioritization of users, booking procedures, supervisory requirements, liability, and insurance."

Have you had difficulty booking a school gym for community use? Are costs a problem, is there lack of access to equipment? Have you seen gyms sit empty when they're reserved for school use, have you wondered why certain groups get gym slots denied to others?

If you're a school principal, have you had problems getting access to community pools, arenas, and other facilties? Do you have concerns about costs or transportation?

We'd like to hear from you at feedback@freepress.mb.ca. Please give your name, organization, and school or municipality, and be specific about which schools' and municipalities' facilities have been problematic for you. We'll publish responses.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 4, 2011 A6