The Toronto District School Board is reviewing the way it maintains its school buildings – including the oversight of routine plumbing, carpentry and repair work – in an effort to curb costs in the face a $3-billion maintenance backlog and a budget crunch that has led to staff cuts.
For
years, the board has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars paying skilled
tradespeople to do menial work. Those costs include, in the 2011-2012 school
year: $161,805.37 to unclog toilets; $84,716.18 to check and adjust
thermostats; $33,977.63 to hang photos; and $56,531.76 to replace light bulbs,
according to data obtained by The Globe and Mail through a Freedom of
Information request. (See a school-by-school breakdown and search for your
school here.)
“I’ll be very open and say there’s room for
improvement in all areas across the district on roles and responsibilities,
[including] our key managers, our key leads in terms of oversight,” director of
education Donna Quan said.
She
said the reporting structure of the facilities department is changing, and the
number of supervising managers is increasing to improve oversight and
accountability.
Over
the past year, the TDSB has decreased the facilities department’s ratio of
trades workers to managers – to 40:1 from 60:1 – and begun flagging work orders
with inappropriate costs.
Faced
with a looming deficit, trustees for Canada’s largest school board voted in
February to cut nearly 250 high-school teaching jobs, including special
education teachers and guidance counsellors. They also cut dozens of
educational assistants, office staff and vice-principals, but the board still
faces a $23-million shortfall. It will be grappling with its operational budget
through June.
“We’ve
gone to great lengths to rectify overspending,” trustee Sam Sotiropoulos said.
“Accountability has absolutely been lacking.”
To
get maintenance jobs done at schools, custodians contact managers at the TDSB’s
facilities department. These managers, known as family team leaders, consider
job descriptions outlined in union contracts, the equipment required and the
scale of the task when deciding whether the expertise – and added cost – of a
trades worker is needed, according to the TDSB.
Agreements
between the unions representing custodians, trades workers and the board list
routine duties that should be performed by custodians and those that require
the expertise of trades workers. Hanging photos or changing light bulbs, for
example, are jobs assigned to custodians under that agreement. But Steve Shaw,
a senior manager for the TDSB’s facilities services, said that when the scale
of the job is larger, trades workers are sometimes brought in.
“While
installation of single coat hooks is expected of caretaking staff, installation
of large numbers, e.g. a classroom worth, may be done by a carpenter to
expedite the work,” he said in an e-mail.
In
explaining the tens of thousands of dollars the board spends hiring trades
workers to change light bulbs, Mr. Shaw said that caretakers don’t have the
training or equipment to reach fixtures that are more than 10 feet up, in
gymnasiums, for example.
Excluding
work orders to change light bulbs in gymnasiums, however, still leaves the
board spending $46,844.92 in 2011-12, according to the work orders obtained by
The Globe. This may include cafeterias, auditoriums and parking lots, according
to Mr. Shaw, and some custodians may have to call in trades workers because
they are physically unable to do the work and are assigned to “modified
duties.”
The
school board’s reluctance to close aging, half-empty school buildings despite
declining enrolment is also contributing to the high costs of maintenance work.
Many are spending more than $1,000 per student each year for school maintenance
work done by trades workers.
The
top costs in 2011-12 were incurred at John Polanyi Collegiate, where the board
spent $2,705.65 per student. Mr. Shaw blamed the fact that the building is
operating at 41 per cent capacity, and incurred $155,000 in flood damage. The
next most expensive school was Fairbank Public School, where the board spent
$2,457.09 per student. Mr. Shaw attributed the costs to the fact that the
school is operating at 34 per cent capacity and that “there was a painting
program [there] in 2012 and work was done to support the transfer of students
from [another school].”
The
average amount per student was $272.46.
The
board has closed and sold a handful of underused school buildings over the past
four years, and former education director Chris Spence shared plans to review
high schools for closings as recently as last fall. Recent scandals, however,
including Dr. Spence’s resignation over allegations of plagiarism, appear to
have put those plans on hold.
Some
jobs, such as unclogging toilets and related plumbing, accumulate costs because
the work must be done after school, resulting in overtime for the board’s
approximately 50 staff plumbers – six of whom made Ontario’s Sunshine List last
year, down from eight the year before, for earning more than $100,000.
Concerns
over how the TDSB spends on its facilities prompted the Ontario government in
December to appoint a special assistance team to help the board overhaul its
operations and commission consultants to review its spending. The consultants
issued a scathing report and found millions of dollars in potential savings,
but efforts to implement them were stymied in January, when former Liberal education
minister Laurel Broten renewed hundreds of education sector contracts,
including that of the TDSB’s union of electricians, plumbers and others who
perform routine work at higher costs, the Maintenance and Construction Skilled
Trades Council.
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