REGINA - The Sask Party government was getting heat again from opposition New Democrats, this time on the issue of schools in dire need of repair.
At a news conference at the legislature Thursday, NDP MLAs critics Matt Love (Education), Noor Burki (Immigration), and Jacqueline Roy (Francophone Affairs) released what the NDP described as a “damning” internal government report on the condition of school infrastructure.
The report were obtained by the NDP through a Freedom of Information request. In that listing of school assessments conducted between 2020 and 2024, 13 schools were listed in “critical condition,” the worst ranking covering schools whose needed repairs exceed 30 per cent of replacement costs, while 132 more were listed in “poor condition”.
“The list provided shows 13 schools that meet this terrible, terrible benchmark,” said an outraged Love.
“Now we're talking about roofs leaking, windows boarded up, lack of air conditioning, and in some cases, lack of heat. Now, we would not accept this in our offices. We would not accept that in our places of work. There's no reason that we should accept this for children in Saskatchewan.”
He described the schools as “falling apart under the government’s watch.”
Roy said the report was “particularly damning when it comes to the neglect of Francophone schools throughout this province.” One school was listed in critical condition while six other schools were identified as being in poor shape.
“That's half — half — of the Francophone schools in Saskatchewan that are in bad shape and this Sask Party, believe me, could not be bothered to care. Francophone education is a constitutional right and a cornerstone of Saskatchewan's cultural diversity but students can't learn and teachers can't teach our language and our culture effectively under the current conditions.”
The one Francophone school on the critical list was École Monseigneur de Laval in Regina, at 34.85 per cent. That number was from a 2021 assessment conducted the year before a major water main break happened there in April 2022.
“And I know, I know for a fact that that has left damage, that we still need to repair in certain areas,” Roy said, noting she went to this school as a child.
“So it's quite the tragedy to see this happening in this school and in other schools across the province. I'm sure there's many other stories where you're in a similar position, right? And we are waiting and waiting and waiting. And in some cases we've had in the Francophone School Board instances of concerns about mold, things like that.”
More to the story than meets the eye
While the numbers in the report seemed to point to a dire condition for many schools in the province, they do not tell the entire story.
Among the schools listed as being in the most dire critical condition were Robert Melrose Elementary School in Kelvington at 81.1 per cent critical, while Regina’s Imperial Community School was listed at 68.38 per cent and St. Michael Community Elementary School is listed at 68.07 per cent critical.
But those schools are already being replaced. Robert Melrose along with Kelvington High School recently merged into a single K to 12 school, located in a renovated high school building. Those students have relocated to their new school this year.
Imperial School was closed and demolished during the summer, and students from there and from nearby McDermid School have enrolled this fall at the newly opened tawâw School, part of a joint use facility combining students from several Regina Public and Regina Catholic schools in the northeast.
St. Michael students will also move to that same joint use facility in January as part of the new St. Raphael School. Also joining will be students from St. Peter School, which will also be closing within months and which was listed in the report at 38.12 per cent critical. For now, the St. Raphael students are still attending school in the existing St. Michael and St. Peter school buildings.
Love did acknowledge that some of the schools in critical condition had “either been replaced or in the process of being closed down.”
But he also pointed out “we still have students in a number of those schools. You know, several here in Regina and others where they are still learning in those schools as they await replacement.”
“But when we look at this government's track record and the years that it takes to replace a school, we're talking years. Years while students are learning in these conditions. Not one year, like six, seven, eight years that they're learning in schools that are slated for replacement before a shovel even gets into the ground. So, the pace that this government is moving at is leaving kids in these schools that they deem in critical condition.”
Love was asked by reporters if the NDP planned to contact any of the principals or staff at the schools listed as in poor or critical shape. Love said they would.
“Our outreach tends to be to the elected school boards, and so we do that all the time, whether directly to school boards or through the Saskatchewan School Boards Association, the SSBA. Absolutely, you know, we will continue. This is something that has been, quite frankly, raised as a concern, brought to us by school boards individually and by the SSBA for years. This is not something that they were unaware of. They are very, very aware of the challenges that they face and the budgets that they get from this government to provide high quality instruction in a school that is not falling apart.”
Government slams NDP for doing nothing while in government
The Sask Party government was contacted for a response and had this to say:
“School Divisions develop their maintenance plans and are responsible for allocating the Preventative Maintenance & Renewal (PMR) Funding that they receive from the Ministry of Education each year. This budget our government allocated $65 Million to school divisions for PMR funding which was an increase of 30 per cent from last year.
“Of the 13 schools referenced in this report as critical, half have replacement schools coming, and the remaining schools have close to $10 million in Preventative Maintenance & Renewal Funding allocated to their maintenance plans.
“We will take no lessons from the lost and reckless NDP who closed schools and allocated $0 to preventative maintenance and renewal funding when they were in government.”
With files from Nicole Goldsworthy / Local Journalism Initiative Reporter.
