The Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»School Board released a long-awaited comprehensive audit on the school district's buildings Tuesday.
It concludes seismic upgrades would cost an estimated $618 million-a figure that climbs to $1.1 billion if general maintenance work is included with seismic upgrading.
Forty-eight Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»schools, which don't currently have supported capital projects underway, have at least one vulnerable structure. They're at high risk of widespread damage or structural failure and that the buildings will likely not be able to be used as shelters or be salvageable if a significant earthquake happens.
The audit, launched in 2009 as a joint project with the Ministry of Education, which paid for bulk of the costs, looked at several criteria including structural condition, facility condition, non-structural seismic vulnerability, green considerations, suitability for modern educational needs and heritage value.
Nineteen of the 48 vulnerable schools were rated 10 out of 10 for heritage architectural significance and 21 were found to have significant deferred maintenance problems aside from seismic problems.
The report details three options of each school-seismic upgrade only, a full upgrade or full replacement.
It's not breaking news that dozens of schools will suffer significant damage in a major earthquake or that it will cost millions to upgrade or replace vulnerable schools, but board chair Patti Bacchus said the report, produced by Coriolis Consulting, is important because it's the first to pull together a great deal of detailed information about VSB buildings. "What we lacked until now was this sort of cohesive plan-the kind of data we need to really sit down with the ministry, the city, and the community and develop a plan that says this is what we're going to do for the entire city. We've been doing these clusters or case-by-case projects and going to the ministry one at a time to try and get approvals and then going back to the city. It's just taking a very long time," she said.
"As the scope of the problem became more obvious-the ministry saw that we kept coming back with these pretty significant requests for funding-they recognized we need to be doing this in a more systematic way."
Bacchus wants to see firm timelines and funding commitments outlined for all projects. "We need a timeline in place that says when they're going to get done and where they're expected to be completed so these things don't get pushed to the back burner every time another issue comes up," she said.
The VSB is currently working on three project submissions with the ministry for Strathcona, Gordon and Queen Mary elementary schools. A request for project approval for Kitsilano secondary has been submitted and awaits approval to proceed.
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