REPORTS: Property

PROPERTY

The Association’s Executive held two productive meetings with Judith Johnston and Paul Bourke from the Ministry of Education in August and November 2009 and then met with Paul Bourke on 17 March 2010.  Paul was able to give the Executive an update on the latest criteria for those schools entering into new 10 year property plans (10ypp) and 5 year agreement (5ya) changes in 2010.  From these meetings there was a definite feeling that there was  a growing understanding of the property issues as they specifically apply to area schools.

The main points are:

• 5 ya now based on $30 psm (previously $20)
• There will be a focus on schools developing Modern learning Environments (MLEs).  There will be a questionnaire on these as part of developing a plan.  This will be on-line and set new criteria to recognise changing needs in schools (eg a need for smaller spaces besides classrooms).
• Schools will be able to increase their “footprint” by up to 300 sm depending on age of buildings, health and safety needs and MLE criteria.
• There will be extra fuding for isolation if a school’s index is >2 (most Area Schools).  This will be worked out on a formula of property budget x (isolation index  x 3/100).
• Capitalisation level raised from $2500 to $5000.  This will reduce compliance but projects will come out of operations grant.  Schools can possibly aggregate jobs and  money saved by this will be redistributed to schools through operations grants.
• Compliance for jobs under $100,000 will be reduced for those schools that have a good record of compliance.

This was all good news, especially the recognition of an isolation factor and the ability to increase our “footprint”, both of  which should benefit most Area Schools.

We will need to review the  increase in the “footprint” to see if this does allow for a recognition in smaller Area Schools of providing spaces for specialised curriculum coverage for secondary classes.  

John Garner
Collingwood Area School

April 2010