Bids in for public-private partnership study

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This article was published 19/06/2017 (3380 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba government’s plan to build major infrastructure projects through public-private partnerships has passed its first hurdle.

But the earliest parents and students will find out if they’ll get a new school built as one of the province’s first P3 projects will be February — and shovels wouldn’t go in the ground until at least 2019.

Education Minister Ian Wishart said Friday the province received four bids by Thursday afternoon’s deadline to conduct a study determining if there is a business case to be made for building four new schools using the P3 model (in which private companies would design, build, finance and maintain facilities that would be operated by their respective school boards).

Emphasizing target dates each step of the way is at the province’s discretion, Wishart said a contract could be awarded by July 31. The winning firm would start work the next day, with a target date of February to advise Wishart if P3 is the way to go with the four new schools.

Premier Brian Pallister announced at a national P3 conference in Winnipeg this spring the province would study building P3 schools in the Winnipeg, Seven Oaks, Pembina Trails and Brandon school divisions.

The projects include schools in the Waterford Green neighbourhood (Winnipeg School Division) and Brandon first promised by the former NDP government in 2015.

So anxious are the divisions to get those schools built, Seven Oaks has offered the province the design plans for one of its existing schools in an effort to speed up the process and save money, said superintendent Brian O’Leary.

“We remain the most crowded school division in Manitoba. We have only 110 square feet per pupil, compared to the provincial average of 165.

“We have two new residential subdivisions under construction and several more subdivisions in various stages of planning and development,” O’Leary said. “In the short term, we will manage with portables and the conversion of non-instructional space to classrooms.”

WSD board chairwoman Sherri Rollins said the Public Schools Finance Board (PSFB) had previously authorized the division to buy land in Waterford Green. “So, of course, we anticipated a school. It’s a lot of watching and listening and seeking clarification.

“We’ve asked some clarifying questions: will the school community and division get to provide input in design? Will we get a seat at the table? Will the processes that we enjoy the relationship with PSFB remain intact?”

Meanwhile, WSD is busing students from the Waterford Green and Canterbury Meadows neighbourhoods to four other schools. A fifth is standing by when those are full and portables are being added.

In Brandon, “We continue to find ways of accommodating our enrolment growth. The province re-evaluated our schools last year, and their new calculations said we had more capacity than previous calculations,” said board chairman Kevan Sumner.

“We don’t agree with the new calculations, as we currently have 100 per cent room utilization in six of our 14 K to (Grade) 8 schools, and even these newly calculated capacities will be exceeded in seven of our 16 K-6/K-8 schools by 2021. The PSFB turned down all of our portable classroom requests this year,” Sumner said.

“We have made frequent adjustments to catchment areas in recent years to relieve our most overburdened schools, and areas of new residential development are a patchwork of busing routes, as each new residential subdivision is bused to schools with sufficient capacity,” he said.

“Like other divisions, we have had to convert non-instructional space and even move classes off-site, and next fall we are moving our at-risk youth and off-campus programs into a new, larger facility we are renting directly from the City of Brandon.”

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca