Offloads burden Brandon

BRANDON -- Today marks the first full day of classes for all students in the Brandon School Division. As they return to their classrooms, they are probably noticing their schools are getting crowded. So crowded, in fact, some of their classrooms, the portable kind, arrived on wheels just a few weeks ago.

The majority of Brandon schools are at or near capacity. Enrolment has increased by 1,000 students over the past decade and a study the BSD conducted last year predicts the rate of growth could continue for at least the next decade. Every chair in every classroom in the division could be occupied within two years.

"We're running out of space very, very rapidly," school board chairman Mark Sefton recently told the Brandon Sun. "We're going to hit that max capacity very, very quickly."

Much of that growth is due to the ongoing influx of foreign workers for the Maple Leaf Pork plant, with a significant percentage of their children requiring expensive English as an additional language assistance. In less than a decade, the number of EAL students has risen from fewer than 100 to more than 1,400. It could exceed 2,000 students -- almost one-quarter of the BSD's total student population -- within a decade.

When the impact of student population growth is combined with the Selinger government's new policy requiring that all kindergarten-to-Grade 3 class sizes be reduced to a maximum of 20 students by 2017, the division could need as many as 70 additional classrooms five years from now.

The financial side of the situation is equally dire, as the division has determined compliance with the K-3 mandate alone will add $4 million in salary and related costs to the annual operating budget. Those costs will increase each year with inflation and additional population growth.

As part of the transition toward the class-size reduction target, the BSD recently added nine full-time teaching positions, at an estimated cost of $756,000. Just $131,000 of that cost is covered by a class-size initiative grant from the province. "If you're going four years to get to $4 million, $131,000 is a pretty tiny first step," Sefton told the Sun.

"What concerns us is somebody from a distance makes an announcement and the taxpayers in Brandon have to open their pockets to fund it."

Trying to stay ahead of the problem, the division has submitted an urgent request to the province's Public Schools Finance Board for a new school to be constructed in Brandon by the fall of 2015. Based on typical construction timelines, approval would have to be granted immediately in order to meet that time frame.

Given the budget crunch facing the province, Brandon trustees shouldn't hold their breath waiting for positive news from the finance board. The more likely solution will be dozens of additional portable classrooms scattered throughout the division. At $200,000 per unit, however, the total cost of portables could exceed the cost of a new school. The key difference is portables can be available for use in weeks, while a new school could take several years to be ready for use.

While the situation is causing headaches for Sefton and his fellow school trustees, it could soon translate into even greater anxiety for Brandon taxpayers. Many of them are still reeling from the shock of 2012 property-tax increases of 20 per cent and higher, thanks to reassessment and a free-spending city council.

In addition to shouldering the bulk of the K-3 initiative's cost so far, the BSD also covers most of the costs of EAL programming (more than $1,100 per EAL student per year), the province's "stay in school to age 18" mandate, special measures for students with severe health issues and other demands that are normally regarded as the province's responsibility. It adds up to millions of dollars in mostly unfunded mandates, downloaded by the Selinger government onto Brandon's property owners.

"We get kind of upset when we're told that we need to implement someone else's mandate, but on our dime, or more appropriately, on our taxpayers' dime," says Sefton.

Brandonites could feel the same way a few months from now, when they receive their property-tax bills.

Deveryn Ross is a political commentator living in Brandon deverynrossletters@gmail.com .

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 6, 2012 A11