November 12th, 2019
BURLINGTON, ON
Each year the Halton District School Board holds a meeting to which community organizations and members of the public are invited to discuss potential planning and partnership opportunities.
Partnership opportunities in existing schools and co-build opportunities in proposed new schools, as well as a new Board Administrative Centre, will be discussed at the J.W. Singleton Education Centre, 2050 Guelph Line, Burlington on December 11th at 7:00 pm
Potential partners are requested to bring relevant planning information such as population projections, growth plans, community needs, land use and greenspace/park requirements to the meeting.
The big one on this list is the critical need for a new administrative building on the Upper Middle Road – Guelph Line site. The existing structure is bursting at the seams. Much of the senior staff has to located at the Gary Allan High School on New Street which results in hours of wasted time in travel between the two locations.
A number of the trustees were hoping that any new administrative building would be located closer to the center of the Region; that probably won’t happen because the Board currently owns the land on which the administrative building is located where there is a lot of space for a new building.
There is some background information, policy and the procedures the Boards are required to follow.
You will find that HERE
The key contact at the Board of Education is Domenico Renzella, Senior Manager, Planning. 905-335-3663 | Toll-free 1-877-618-3456
Related news stories:
New Admin building will cost $23 million.
Not all trustees like the idea of a new Admin building in Burlington.
Why isn’t Pearson High School being renovated for Board offices? It’s even closer to the current office. I agree $23 million should be used to bring schools up to date on repairs first. Also is the current staff load necessary? After all 2 high schools closed, 2 less Superintendents not needed in which case their support staff not needed. Cuts start at the top which we have not seen! After all it’s about the kids first!
Given the current provincial political climate with the focus at Queen’s Park on cost cutting, the closure of high schools (not to mentioned the anger and dislocation that this has generated), and the number of teaching positions being cut, one would naturally have expected that the demands for a new administrative building would have been silenced. Evidently not.
Many of these administrative positions could easily work from home. Several others could operate out of leased space elsewhere in the community. With the prevalence of new communications technology we don’t need to house everyone under one roof, and we don’t need to spend $23 million to build a nice, new shining edifice to public sector largesse.
Note to Board of Education trustees and senior education bureaucrats: read the political tea leaves. It’s time to get with reality!
First they cry about budget cuts as a result of Premier Ford cutting spending ,now they want to build a bigger admin building to house the three hundred analysts on the payroll . Also Gary Allen is a 20 minute ride from present admin building ,how are they wasting hours of travel then?
Eve, your post reveals a need for two key initiatives in revised funding to education in Ontario. First, no new “palaces” of education should be being built until the backlog in repairs and maintance of school infrastructure–now in the billions in Ontario, has been resolved. After all, to use the mantra of education, “it’s about the kids”. Second, education spending should be revised to create a separate envelope for administrative spending with severe financial and personal consequences for attempts to download administrative costs onto the schools or to repurpose school spending on administration. The private sector has come to recognize that administrative spending is often inefficient and wasteful–so-called “head office disease” in which bureaucratic empires become impervious to cuts in personnel and costs, even when not meeting the needs of the companies’ customers. It’s time a line-item review is instituted by the MInistry on the spending, not only in its own Ministry, but by the individual school boards.
Perhaps the HDSB should consider moving their administrative offices to Robert Bateman High School which is scheduled to close in June of 2020. Why build new when they will have a vacant property in east Burlington?
Sell the prime corner where the Board office now sits and use the proceeds to renovate Bateman as the Board Office. But none of that should be done until the backlog of repairs to the schools has been dealt with; after all, “it’s about the kids”.
Perhaps the problem is not the size of the building but the size of a bloated educational bureaucracy.