Union pushing district to fund repairs for VSS

It may only be about five years old but the union representing support staff at School District 22 wants the district to fund repairs at Vernon Secondary School that have gone untouched.

CUPE said the district agreed to take $400,000 from the VSS capital fund, to help with the BX Elementary school expansion, which was announced in May.

“We have shutters on that site that have not been working for almost three years, and there are no funds left for VSS,” CUPE President Gray Boisvert said, adding the lack of attention on these repairs has affected student’s learning.

“We are having to put up paper there. We’ve got shutters that are permanently closed, we’ve got shutters that are stuck open, and I’m just curious as to where are we going to find those funds and how soon can we make those repairs?“ he said.

In response, the district said that the BX Elementary expansion and the repairs needed at VSS are different issues.

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“I see them as two separate issues,” Secretary Treasurer Sterling Olson said at their board meeting on Wednesday.

“The construction project at VSS was completed, we used the funds that we were given to complete that project, at the end of the day we had $300,000 left. So there’s $300,000 from VSS’s capital budget and $125,000 from some other ministry capital funding, but really what we have now is some components of the building that aren’t working well and we need to fix,” he said.

Olson added he will be speaking to the Director of Facilities about the repairs sometime soon.