About fifteen schools emptied for construction sites within three years
Renovation work in Montreal schools will force 5,000 students to change schools over the next three years. For the very first time, the Montreal School Service Center (CSSDM) will even build two schools precisely to accommodate students during construction sites.
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Saint-Émile school, in the Rosemont district
Within three years, some fifteen schools – mainly primary – will see their students be relocated. It is therefore about 1 in 15 students of this service center, which has 75,000, who will be displaced. “That’s a lot of students,” observes Mathieu Desjardins, director of the school organization service at the CSSDM.
There are many neighborhoods where the work will be done. From the next school year, for example, students from Saint-Émile school, in Rosemont, will be relocated for a planned period of one year. In Côte-des-Neiges, the International School of Montreal will be the subject of “major repair work” within three years, while the 465 students of the Ahuntsic school, in the district of the same name, will have to do so. leave next year.
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The International School of Montreal, in the Côte-des-Neiges district
The CSSDM came to the conclusion: renovating schools filled with students and teachers is far from ideal. Go for window changes in summer or the repair of a roof, but as soon as the work gets tougher, it gets complicated.
What’s more, it is not uncommon for the cost of work to increase by 40% when it must be done in occupied schools, says Bruno Marchand, director of the material resources department.
Work schedules, noise, dust, delivery of materials, vehicle maneuvers: you can’t work as if nothing had happened.
Bruno Marchand, director of the material resources department of the CSSDM, about the work in occupied schools
“Transitional” schools during the works
It is for this reason that the so-called “transitional” schools are multiplying, spaces that are used to house students while their home school is being renovated. There are currently 14 spread across the country, and there will soon be 17.
Under an “arrangement” with the Ministry of Education, the CSSDM will build in the coming years two new transitional schools on the land of the Marie-Anne high schools, in Ahuntsic, and Marguerite-De Lajemmerais, in the Rosemont district. .
“They will be new schools, all beautiful”, which will have a first life as a transitional school, then a second to accommodate students from neighborhoods where existing schools are not enough, explains Mathieu Desjardins, CSSDM.
Most often, transitional schools are in buildings that were previously rented to community organizations. “Fortunately, in the past, we made the decision to keep these old buildings. It was salutary, a good decision by the school commissioners ”, observes Alain Perron, spokesperson for the CSSDM.
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2570, rue Nicolet, in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve
The building located at 2570, rue Nicolet, in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, is one example. It could eventually accommodate the students of the Étincelle primary school during work which is due to begin in two years.
Whether it is a new building or an old renovated building, it is estimated that each transitional school costs around $ 30 million.
Impacts on Families and Teachers
Changing schools is not without consequences, reminds the Alliance des professeures et professors de Montréal. “It involves moving equipment, but also a reorganization. In the case of an elementary school, you have to rethink the recess, think about where to dine, ”illustrates Catherine Beauvais-St-Pierre, president of the union.
The president of the parents’ committee of Montreal schools, Marc-Étienne Deslauriers, points out that moves are sometimes less welcome.
When transitional buildings are within walking distance, it’s easier to live with. When it is uprooted because we have to take school transport or public transport every day, there are places where it happens less.
Marc-Étienne Deslauriers, President of the Parents’ Committee of Montreal Schools
He adds that the service center has the obligation to transport elementary students from one school to another, but not those from secondary schools.
Insufficient investments
By 2030, Quebec has set itself the goal of restoring unsatisfactory buildings to “satisfactory” condition. At the CSSDM, the average age of schools is 72, and 191 buildings (out of 268) are considered to be in very poor condition.
The CSSDM’s asset maintenance budget is 173 million dollars this year, “but the need is more in the order of 350 million”, we observe at the service center.
“The first 110 million we receive is used to maintain infrastructure. If they are in poor condition, we keep them in poor condition. It’s that simple, ”says Bruno Marchand bluntly, who qualifies the Quebec objective as“ ambitious ”.
He continues his calculation: if we want to improve the condition of schools this year, there are about 50 or 60 million left. The cost of about two schools, says Marchand.
The maintenance deficit of the CSSDM schools, which amounts to $ 1.6 billion, means that in no time, an emergency can disrupt well-planned situations, recalls Marc-Étienne Deslauriers , of the parents’ committee of Montreal schools.
He cites the example of Sophie-Barat high school, in the Ahuntsic district, some of whose students were urgently relocated several kilometers from their homes last year because an area of the school threatened to collapse.
“It remains for me one of the worst examples of what happens for students when you have to do homework in a school,” says Mr. Deslauriers. The students of the regular, for which it is the neighborhood school, are now housed in a former primary school.
“It is obvious that the maintenance deficit means that, even if we could plan everything, it just takes a small glitch to bring everyone back to the emergency”, concludes Marc-Étienne Deslauriers.
Consult the list of schools concerned
Accounting deficit of 57 million at the CSSDM
The Montreal School Service Center (CSSDM) ends its 2020-2021 fiscal year with an accounting deficit of 57 million, but it actually shows an adjusted net surplus of 2.8 million, out of a total budget of 1.258 billion. It is because the expected subsidies which are linked to the salary increases granted by the Legault government and to pay equity will soon come to clean up the slate.
More than the pandemic, it is largely the dilapidation of its schools that is costing the CSSDM dearly. On paper, the asset maintenance deficit stands at 1.6 billion.
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The asset maintenance deficit of CSSDM schools amounts to 1.6 billion.
This translates into expensive renovations and major maintenance work.
Expenses relating to the maintenance of real estate assets, the elimination of the maintenance deficit, as well as repair and transformation works amounted to more than 251.3 million in 2020-2021, compared to 230.1 million in 2019-2020.
For this fiscal year in the midst of a pandemic, the CSSDM also had higher than usual expenditure in information technology (many computers were notably purchased during the pandemic).
Investments in the information technology sector are 22.2 million in 2020-2021, compared to 7.7 million in 2019-2020.
COVID-19, which caused a lot of expense for the CSSDM and other school service centers, ultimately did not have the impact that was initially feared. If the financial impacts of COVID-19 for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021 are evaluated at 41.5 million, the CSSDM has received “an allocation of 65.4 million in financial support from the Ministry of Education, which includes a sum of 41.5 million to cover all the financial impacts of the year, and a sum of 23 million for the impacts of the pandemic of the previous year ”, we can read.
“Continuous and rigorous effort”
When the subsidies related to wage increases and pay equity are received, the accumulated deficit – which was 99 million before this fiscal year – will not have been deepened, which testifies, writes the Financial Resources Department, of “A continuous and rigorous effort to manage public funds” of the organization.
For fiscal year 2019-2020, the adjusted net deficit was $ 0.3 million.
The CSSDM did not offer further comments on this year’s performance.
This school service center – the largest in Quebec – was put under supervision in June by the Quebec government in the wake of a governance crisis shaking it. Eight of the fifteen members of the board of directors resigned during their mandate, thus paralyzing the organization, which no longer had a quorum for its meetings and decision-making. As a result, four board meetings had to be canceled between April and June.
Since June 16, 2021, Jean-François Lachance has been appointed tutor, and meetings of the board of directors are replaced until further notice by meetings of the administrator of the tutorship.