A record number of newly constructed school buildings representing an addition of nearly 800 primary and secondary classes will welcome students at the start of the school year, it has been noted. The Duty. However, several of these projects are coming to fruition these days after having accumulated delays in recent years. A context which has caused their bill to swell.
“Since the beginning of the year, it has been rock and roll ” says architect Eve Desrosiers, from the firm Héloïse Thibodeau architecte, who has taken part in the design of many schools in Quebec. “We are always overwhelmed, but this year in particular, it has been a trying year,” she adds.
There are currently 121 schools under construction, according to the Duty the Quebec Ministry of Education. A number that excludes 25 newly constructed school buildings that will come into service in time for the start of the school year at the end of the month.
“This is the biggest year for new building commissioning since 2017,” the ministry said in an email. The list includes mostly new construction, but also two school reconstructions and the expansion of Chambly High School, which was initially scheduled to be completed in 2022.
Nearly 800 classes
According to the analysis of the Dutythe conclusion of these projects represents an addition of 759 classes in primary and secondary schools, excluding those located in the Laval Metallurgy Training Center. The budget associated with these 25 projects reaches 2.2 billion.
“We are building new buildings, but will we have the necessary staff and qualified personnel? It is to be expected that there will be issues at that level,” reacts the vice-president of labour relations at the Fédération autonome de l’enseignement, Benoît Giguère. “But we can say that the fact that there are new buildings, in addition to improving working conditions, can encourage people to go and work there,” continues the union representative. He hopes that these new schools will have a greater power to attract and retain staff than the aging buildings in the school network.
“A new school is a pleasant place for everyone: the people who work there and the people who study there. Parents know that the students are in healthy, safe, well-designed, well-lit and well-ventilated spaces, so it’s reassuring. It’s good news,” says Sylvain Martel, spokesperson for the Regroupement des comités de parents autonomes du Québec. However, he doubts that these new schools will be enough to welcome the 20,000 new students anticipated by Quebec into the school system this year.
Deadlines
The analysis of the Duty also shows that a third of the construction sites of the 25 buildings that are coming into service this year have accumulated delays in recent years. These were initially planned for the start of the school year in the fall of 2022 or 2023. Delays that have contributed to inflating the bill for these projects, analyzes Eve Desrosiers.
“Every day of exceeding [de l’échéancier]”It costs more, that’s for sure,” says the architect, who points out that for a general contractor, “the simple fact of being on a construction site” involves “astronomical costs,” whether the work is progressing or not.
These delays also affect students’ daily lives. In an interview, Dominique Robert, the Deputy CEO of the Fédération des centres de services scolaires du Québec, mentioned the “increasingly” implementation in recent years of “temporary measures” aimed at ensuring that all students can continue their studies while these projects drag on. “This is a phenomenon that we have been able to observe more widely in recent years, with the impacts that it implies.”
Students then find themselves having to study in modular classrooms — often called “trailers” — or being temporarily transferred to another school in the region. However, “when you change schools, it’s never good news for the child and it’s not ideal for success,” notes Sylvain Martel. “It’s complicated and it creates anxiety,” for both parents and children, he continues.
“Explosion of costs”
According to the president of the Montreal School Administration Association, Kathleen Legault, the delays noted in the completion of several school projects can be linked to the “explosion of construction costs” in recent years. “This has forced several projects to go back to the drawing board” to fit into Quebec’s budgetary guidelines, which “creates delays,” she points out.
“The last few years have been marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and a high inflation rate,” the Ministry of Education also recalled in an email to DutyIn this context, Quebec “monitors the implementation of projects and ensures that budgets are respected as far as possible,” adds the ministry, which specifies that “when overruns are raised, analyses are carried out to justify the additional amounts and ensure the completion of the project.”
Lack of maintenance
Last month, The Duty revealed that after increasing investments in recent years to tackle the backlog in the maintenance of schools in the province, this envelope has been reduced by 409.2 million in anticipation of the 2024-2025 school year. A situation that could force the suspension of certain maintenance work.
In this context, the president of the Centrale des syndicats du Québec, Éric Gingras, emphasizes that the construction of new schools must not be done to the detriment of financing the renovation of “old” schools, which are in great need of it.
“There are currently schools that are closing or whose premises are closing due to the maintenance deficit that has accumulated over time,” recalls Benoît Giguère. “We will have to maintain, even exceed investment levels since the real estate stock is deteriorating more quickly than the money that is invested,” he says.
However, “when we are faced with vermin on a recurring basis, when it is very hot or very cold in the winter because the heating does not work, in short, when there are different factors that make the environment much less conducive to learning, well it seems to me that this should be a priority,” says Kathleen Legault.
With Sarah Boumedda