WEYBURN - It was a team effort Feb. 14 in the South East Cornerstone Public School Division's office on Feb. 14 when a group of team leaders approached board members who were holding their regular monthly open session.
The invitation to spread the word on items that entailed upkeep of buildings, constructing new buildings and carrying students to these buildings was led by manager of facilities and transportation Andy Dobson.
The manager brought in transportation supervisor Andy Verhaeghe, Weyburn transportation foreman Jesse Forsyth and assistant caretaker supervisor Mat Caudill. Facilities operations supervisor Jim Swyryda was also in on the visit while Michelle Van De Sype, the facilities administrative assistant, monitored the session.
“We have 240 staff members in total and I’d put my crew up against any other in the province,” said Dobson in his opening remarks.
The team members took turns outlining the hits and misses in each of their areas of expertise, beginning with Caudill and the caretaking portfolio. He spoke of a variety of in-service and orientation sessions held for the 35 schools, division office and two shops.
The operations team, said Swyryda, tends to services required in 52 buildings that included not only all the schools, but also six shops, six teacherages and the division office.
The transportation side of it, according to Forsyth, included 155 regular school bus routes, 199 buses and 56 fleet vehicles to maintain and manage.
The refurbishing of a bus garage in Moosomin went “a lot better than I thought”, said Dobson. The cost of $470,000 was well below the price of a new building and it can house up to five buses for maintenance or seven for storage, and it serves a useful purpose to accommodate the expanded bus routes after Cornerstone took over the previous 23 routes that had been covered by a contracted service in the past.
A major project, a new pre-Kindergarten to Grade 12 school in Carlyle is now underway and in the planning stages with the expectation of the completion of design work and construction over the next three years.
A new relocatable classroom has also been approved for Assiniboia Park School in Weyburn, he said.
Caudill spoke of how their on-line ordering system served the designated caretaker at each school. He also related how the blood borne pathogen spill kits are dispensed and used in all schools, and how the chemical dispensing systems now being deployed are showing a cost saving of up to 40 per cent while caretaking and paper supplies are increasing.
Caudill explained that while casual and temporary caretakers are easily found in the urban centres, they are harder to get in the rural communities. He also spoke of upcoming issues that will confront them regarding aging equipment such as floor scrubbers, snow blowers and swing machines with half of them being 10 years old or older.
There is also a caretaking supervision issue in Estevan due to a retirement in 2021 that has not been filled and impacts the 18 caretakers within the division’s schools in that city.
Swyryda said that, “you’ve seen for a number of years the subject of roofs, roofs, roofs. Summer rains, spring snow melts, phone calls and emails.” About $10 million has been spent on roofing, mostly for schools in the past few years but not without successes. He reported that roof condition issues once registered at nearly 32 per cent and that has since been reduced to just over 11 per cent, making Cornerstone one of the leaders in the province in attacking that ongoing, annual problem.
LED lighting upgrades have also significantly reduced service requests with 26 of the 35 schools now boasting new LED systems that reduce service calls significantly. When they are required, the work can be performed more efficiently.
They are also staying on top of heating and air exchange issues.
Overall, the reduction in service requests and time to complete operations tasks has been reduced from 2,005 requests in 2018 to just 119 pending requests, which is down from the previous year’s 320 requests.
Chemical spraying certification is down due to lack of courses for applicants, so contract spraying may have to be deployed in some areas, Swyryda said. That could nearly double the annual costs to the $52,000-$58,000 range.
It was also noted that obtaining summer staffers is also an issue. He noted that in the past there would usually be 20-30 applicants seeking summer jobs with the division. The last listing showed just six applicants in the south and none in the eastern sector.
Verhaeghe revisited the issue of getting certified bus drivers and their orientation sessions plus bonuses and recruitment awards.
He also spoke about the new wheel lifts for buses at the newly-renovated Moosomin service centre, bus fleet life cycles which call for a bus retirement within 10 years and/or 300,000 kilometres, and extension of some of those buses that can be used as spares in urban centres. He said to keep that pace, there would need to be about 12-15 new bus purchases annually. Last year Cornerstone was able to purchase nine new school buses.
Verhaeghe also outlined the new GPS systems installed in all the buses for student tracking, live-time bus speeds and locations, paperless driver and fuel logs and other reports that add to student and driver safety since “their location is visible and unplanned stops are reported,” he said.
Cameras have been in the buses since 2019, and they will be in all buses in the near future which are very beneficial for investigations.
“We started the year with 11 open bus runs, we’re now sitting with six.”
Forsyth then added they have hired and orientated 12 new drivers since September 2023. Forsyth then spoke about retaining and recruitment of drivers and the consistency needed in the field of trainers.
“We are gaining some traction in getting new drivers, but it’s still tougher in smaller centres,” he added.
In the future there, is a major re-modernization plan for the Estevan Comprehensive School, waiting for a green light from the provincial government, as it will accompany a new Estevan pre-kindergarten to Grade 6 joint-use school that is to be built in partnership with the Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division. Dobson said the deadline for the renewal of the application is Feb. 29 and they have met that date so the plan can move forward to potential acceptance.
There is also a minor $10 million capital project on the books for a re-modernization of McNaughton High School in Moosomin, while plans for the new school in Carlyle are moving forward into the design phase that will include input from the community.
