Clyde school repair may not finish until 2003

SEAN McKIBBON

IQALUIT — Some students in Clyde River will likely have to put up with another two school years in an old dilapidated wing of the Quluaq school, which began to sink into the ground last November.

Construction of a new wing for the school has been put off for a year. That’s because officials in the Nunavut government’s education department missed deadlines for design work that should have been done in by the end of the 1999-2000 fiscal year.

The delay means planned improvements to the school probably won’t be finished until the 2003-2004 school year, said Lorne Levy, the assistant director of the Baffin Divisional Education Council.

Levy will also be the capital planning manager for the Department of Education as of July 1.

“You’ve got 2000-2001 for design, you’ve got 2001-2002 for the first phase, probably 2002-2003 to finish it off,” he said, charting out a possible timeline for the renovations.

Levy said because students need a place to study while construction of a new wing is taking place, the old wing will most likely have to remain standing.

Levy said an architectural firm has been hired to do the architectural and engineering work that was supposed to have been done last year, and that he and a group of planners would be travelling to Clyde River at the end of May to talk about the design firm’s ideas for improvements to the school.

After discussing those plans, Levy said the designers would take the feedback from the local district education authority (DEA) and the school’s staff, and use that to come up with a more formal design, which he estimated would be ready in the fall of 2000.

He said there would be significant issues to discuss with the DEA and school staff about how classes would operate during the construction phase.

“Then we have to get it to a point where we have working drawings so by March 31 we have a tender package,” said Levy.

However, Levy also said renovations would only be possible as long as the budget for the work is preserved.

Education Minister James Arvaluk has said that $550,000 needed for design work on the school will come from the $1.5 million that MLAs had originally approved for construction work on the school originally planned for this year.

He said new proposals and submissions would have to be made to make sure funding is re-allocated to the school in future years.