School District No. 46 (SD46) has been granted up to $1 million for special capital projects from the Ministry of Education this year, freeing up money in the capital budget for other work in the school district.
SD46 will get up to $250,000 to replace an aging boiler plant at Halfmoon Bay Elementary with a high-efficiency system and up to $750,000 to replace aging roofs at Pender Harbour Secondary, Elphinstone Secondary and Roberts Creek Elementary.
The money will come from the capital management branch of the Ministry of Education in response to SD46 requests.
The boiler project wouldn’t have been possible without the capital grant and the roof work would have been scaled down considerably as SD46 set aside only about $300,000 for roof replacement this year.
“It feels like a windfall given the amount of capital funding we’ve received in recent years to address roofing, which is zero,” SD46 secretary treasurer Nicholas Weswick said this week.
“There’s been an addition of a new capital funding section at the Ministry of Education for these school enhancement projects and we’ve been lucky enough to receive some additional funding as a result.”
The additional funds will free up about $300,000 previously earmarked for roofing this year and the school district will decide how to spend it soon.
“I think we’re going to look at what else we can do to upgrade our facilities, which may involve additional roofing,” Weswick said.
“It might be that we need to play catch-up with our roofing or there may be other enhancement projects we can now look at.”
SD46 manager of facilities Rob Collison said his department was very excited about the granted funds. “The facilities department spends one-third of its annual facilities grant on roof replacements,” he noted in a press release. “This grant gives us the breathing room we need.”
