Parents with concerns about the condition of École St. Pius X joined with the NDP at the Legislature to call on the Sask. Party government to finally commit to repairing or rebuilding the school.
“Having a school with cracking walls or a leaking roof is not a proper learning environment for any student,” said NDP Education Critic Carla Beck. “Parents and teachers have been raising the alarm about the unsafe state of St. Pius for years, but this government has failed to do anything about it.”
The parents of students who attend the school recently sent 259 letters to the Minister, calling on him to make their safety and education a priority and allocate money towards an immediate rebuild of their school.
One parent wrote, “Our children attend school in a building that lacks a sprinkler system and has major failures in load-bearing walls including cracking, moving and buckling of support walls. Mold and asbestos are present throughout the facility. In addition, École St. Pius is not wheelchair accessible.”
Another wrote, “This level of infrastructure failure would be unacceptable in any other government building. It is intolerable for a school where hundreds of young children spend the bulk of their days.”
“These parents deserve to have a safe environment for their children to learn in,” Beck said. “It’s not right or fair for this government to put their mismanagement of the economy on the backs of these students. These parents deserve a predictable, transparent and adequate funding model for Saskatchewan school boards.”