No Promise of Funding for New Giscome School

Tuesday, November 24, 2009 08:41 PM

Prince George, B.C. – School District 57 will have to wait until February of 2010 before it hears if there will be funding for the replacement of Giscome School.

The school was closed at the end of the last school year because of health and safety concerns, and portables put on site for the new school year.

The District has submitted a capital plan, putting the Giscome School at the top of the list along with a request for $4,012,427.00 and while the Ministry of Education agrees this is a high priority item, there is no guarantee the funding will be granted.

Trustee Lois Boone says she appreciates that the Minister of Education is not well, but is frustrated that the Board has not been able to arrange a meeting with the Minister of Education despite promised support from the two local MLAs “ But we’ve been trying since June and there’s been nobody put in place to act as an acting Minister. There’s no one there for us to meet with or to take our concerns about Giscome or any of our other budgetary concerns. It’s really unacceptable situation that we are in this ridiculous financial bind that we’re in, where we’re having to deal with a school that we don’t know if we’re going to get permission to build we don’t know any of these things, and yet we as a Board have had no success in meeting with the Minister of the day. It is very frustrating and everyone should be extremely concerned with what’s going on. We still don’t know what’s happening.” She says while she recognizes that the Minister is ill, she says someone should have been put in place to deal with the issues.

Previous Story - Next Story

Email |

Print |

Facebook |

Twitter |

Digg |

Del.icio.us

Posted on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 08:41 PM in News by 250 News

Return to Home

Comments

Posted by: metalman on November 25 2009 12:27 PM

Surely the old school could have been repaired, even if it cost one million dollars which it would not, it would be less, come on, are they saying the only solution is to knock it down and build a new one and by the way it will cost 4 million? And is 57 going to ignore this school like they did for the Bear Lake school, and let the snow build up until the roof caves in? Something smells rotten here and it's not the school structure.
metalman.