{"id":100941,"date":"2026-06-24T00:58:33","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T00:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/100941\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T00:58:33","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T00:58:33","slug":"124-calgary-schools-past-service-life-as-district-faces-8m-maintenance-funding-drop-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/100941\/","title":{"rendered":"124 Calgary schools past service life as district faces $8M maintenance funding drop"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Calgary Board of Education is falling behind in its efforts to keep aging schools up to date, and that could become even more challenging as the school board faces a roughly $8-million maintenance funding reduction for the upcoming school year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">It could lead to more frequent building system failures, which could in turn affect school operations and even lead to having to shutter schools temporarily if repairs can\u2019t be made quickly enough, said CBE.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">According to a <a href=\"https:\/\/cbe.ab.ca\/about-us\/board-of-trustees\/BoardofTrusteeDocuments\/20260623-public-agenda-regular-meeting.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:report;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;report&quot;}\" class=\"link \">report<\/a> presented to trustees on Tuesday, 60 per cent of CBE schools are past their 50-year planned service life. That lifespan can be extended through major modernizations or replacements.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Of all CBE schools, 124 were built more than 50 years ago and haven\u2019t had a major upgrade. Over the next decade, that number is expected to grow by 26.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Meanwhile, 42 schools are over the age of 70 and haven\u2019t been modernized.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cThis has been a concern for the board,\u201d said chair Laura Hack.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cWe have competing concerns: building new schools in new and developing communities, and we have aging infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">More frequent system failures<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Dany Breton, superintendent of facilities and environmental services, said the CBE could be more proactive with maintaining and upgrading aging infrastructure if it had more funding.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The CBE will be working with roughly $8 million less for maintenance next year \u2014 a 20-per-cent reduction from the current school year, according to Breton \u2014 due to changes in provincial funding, including the discontinuation of the Infrastructure Maintenance and Renewal grant.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Dany Breton is the Calgary Board of Education's superintendent of facilities and environmental services.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"720\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/35559b3db7602a8e5866bd08778b1712.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>(Karina Zapata\/CBC)<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The school board plans maintenance as best as it can, said Breton.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cBut every once in a while, we\u2019re going to get it wrong. And there\u2019s going to be a system we know is beyond its life cycle that will fail,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">He pointed to boilers as one example.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cIt might be in the middle of a really cold spell and all of a sudden we\u2019re having to react much more rapidly. It\u2019ll be disruptive to the classroom because the students won\u2019t have maybe the heat they need.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">It also means higher costs for the school board in the long run, said Breton.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Hack said the board of trustees is \u201calways advocating for students\u2019 best interests\u201d to the provincial government through funding requests.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">In a statement to CBC News, Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides suggested that the CBE use its reserves to fund infrastructure projects for aging schools.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">He said the remaining $50 million from the Infrastructure Maintenance and Renewal grant will be added to the Operations and Maintenance grant.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cThe discontinuation of the Infrastructure Maintenance and Renewal grant will allow school boards greater flexibility in how they can use funds to maintain and upkeep schools.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Calgary Board of Education is falling behind in its efforts to keep aging schools up to date,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[51,9742,4698,36626,20731,11089,36625],"class_list":["post-100941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-calgary","tag-calgary","tag-calgary-board-of-education","tag-funding","tag-infrastructure-maintenance","tag-maintenance","tag-school-board","tag-system-failures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}