Despite promises from François Legault’s government to build the “most beautiful schools in the world”, and despite infrastructure investments of nearly $2.5 billion announced in May for the 2022-2023 school year, Quebec school renovations continue to face administrative stalemates and rising construction material costs.
Véronique Laberge-Gaudin felt “discouraged” and “powerless” when she learned that the mandatory fire safety upgrade work begun this summer in her children’s school would greatly reduce natural light there. The majority (65%) of the glass surfaces in the hallways and stairwells of Guy-Drummond Elementary School, in Outremont, will be replaced by opaque walls because the Center de services scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys (CSSMB) wanted to save $400,000 on a project with a total cost of about $1 million.
Along with 66 other worried parents, Véronique Laberge-Gaudin sent a letter to the service center in June asking for the work to stop. The signatories argued that natural light is essential to the quality of life and the success of the students. But their request was refused, and the work will continue as planned until the start of the school year.
Martin Saint-Jean, another parent and member of the school’s governing board, criticizes a lack of transparency on the part of the CSSMB. He claims to have been informed of the effects of the work on natural light only “a few months” before the start of the work. Having been unable to access the plans for the project, nor to receive satisfactory explanations as to the decision to replace the glazed surfaces with opaque walls, the parents had recourse to an access to information request.
It is also thanks to this request that they learned that the decision had been taken for the sake of economy. The difference, compared to a project that let in more light, was initially estimated at $400,000. Today it would be around $580,000. “Why do you have to go as far as an access to information request to have access to the plans? The management has the plans, they have to be shared,” laments Martin Saint-Jean.
“We are talking about a 40% increase in the total value of the project,” says the director of the CSSMB’s material resources department, Jean-François Chalut. According to him, the choice of the School Service Center is explained by budgetary constraints imposed by the Ministry of Education of Quebec (MEQ), as well as by the rapid increase in the cost of construction projects.
The budgets for such work come from fixed envelopes paid annually by the MEQ. Jean-François Chalut claims to have studied “several factors”, and to have considered them taking into account the entire dilapidated state of the CSSMB’s building stock, which required other work. “If we decide to inject money into a project, that means we have to cancel a project in another building,” he says.
“In the event of a budget overrun for a given project [les centres de services scolaires] can review the programming of the interventions to be carried out in other buildings in order to cover the observed variation”, confirms the director of communications of the MEQ, Esther Chouinard.
“This is a file that has been managed, from our point of view, in an exemplary manner,” concludes Chrystine Loriaux, director of communications for the CSSMB. She also denies having lacked transparency on this file, since the CSSMB has respected its obligations to inform the school management as it makes its decisions. It is then up to the school to “manage its internal management”, she says, and to inform the parents if it wishes, stressing that the school has no obligation to do so.
The importance of natural light
“We have a lot of financial difficulties [au Québec] at the moment, the costs are very high, so it is certain that priority is given to the classroom, to the detriment of other premises,” explains Patric Sabourin, an architect specializing in school projects from Tremblay L’Écuyer Architectes (TLA ). “In life, you don’t just learn in a classroom, you learn everywhere, so the brighter environment is also important to me,” he adds.
Patric Sabourin also indicates that projects for new schools and expansions are now systematically subject to lighting requirements from the Ministry, given the importance of this aspect in the success and quality of life of students. “I did some work on it, we see much less absenteeism when the premises are bright,” he says.
Renovations, on the other hand, such as the fire safety upgrades at the Guy-Drummond school, are not subject to such criteria. The MEQ also states that 25 new primary and secondary schools have been built in Quebec in the last three years, and that 68 have been enlarged, but that “thousands of renovation projects are authorized each year”.
The future of many projects remains at the mercy of administrative impasses, actions by parents, and the management of school service centres. “What makes me sad, too, is to realize that we are resourceful parents and that there are resourceful staff in the school, but that in schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods where there may be less mobilization, they must be penalized even more,” concludes Véronique Laberge-Gaudin.