Proposed school projects can take a year to begin from request date

School district staff outlined the process for parents and community members to see school projects like gardens and tree planting come to fruition following a request from Nanaimo Ladysmith Public Schools’ business committee.

From request to approval can take up to a year and depending on the pot of funding, have different implementation timelines. The facilities department begins intake for its school project program in May with school principals needing to submit proposed projects by the end of June. Requests are entered into a database and facilities works with the department of learning services to consider them. Projects that are “approved in principle” are developed into a scope of work by a facilities planner. School-funded requests are considered for July 1 - June 30 of the upcoming school year. Once approved projects are scheduled for construction.

While that school project program system has been in place since 2019, some landscape projects around the district have run into delays as the school district has yet to draft land use guidelines stipulated in the board of education’s environmental stewardship policy which came into effect in 2022.

At the June 12 committee meeting, Trustee and Board of Education Chair Greg Keller asked staff how to get project planning information into parents’ hands to avoid escalation of matters to a board level.

“We’ve been receiving a fair amount of interest from members of the community presenting to the board with more operational issues related to different improvements they’d like to see around our schools.

“[I’m] wanting to make sure from our level … that we know there is a process for those community members to follow and we can direct them to that process and have confidence that there are timelines and processes,” Keller said.

“One of the things we’re talking about … is how we encourage and share and communicate how processes work within the system because I know that has been a bit of a frustration at times, and we’re trying to get to a level … where people can see the status of their project,” Secretary-Treasurer Mark Walsh told the committee.

Walsh said staff are considering an administrative procedure to make the school district’s internal processes more transparent to the public. Such an administrative procedure could come “in the next year.”

Rachelle Stein-Wotten, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Gabriola Sounder