The Rainbow District School Board says it has had talks about potentially building an athletic dome on school board property in the city, but that's as far as it has gone: Discussion.
The board, which is in the midst of a contentious accommodation review of its schools, has not arrived at any decisions yet, the director of education has told Sudbury.com.
“We've been approached by interested parties to consider a potential athletic or recreational dome,” said Norm Blaseg, the school board's director of education. “It's been very high-level, preliminary discussions.”
A parent reached out to Sudbury.com concerned that the school board was looking at spending potentially millions to build a soccer dome, while crying poor and looking at closing several schools.
Blaseg said they have discussed potential sites for the dome. but have not yet discussed how much it might cost to build.
“Have we made any commitments? Absolutely not,” Blaseg added.
But Rainbow District School Board trustee Larry Killens said trustees did discuss the potential cost of the project during an in-camera meeting.
Because the meeting was closed to the public, Killens said he could not go into detail about what was discussed.
But he did say that in his opinion, the discussion should have never been in-camera in the first place.
“To me there's nothing, other than a very few things, that we can't share with parents,” Killens said.
According to Ontario's Education Act there are five topics of discussion for school board meetings that can be closed to the public.
Those are anything to do with the security of the school board's property; the disclosure of personal financial information with respect to members of the board, employees, students or their parents; the acquisition or disposal of a school site; decisions in respect of negotiations with employees of the board; and any litigation affecting the school board.
Killens said the in-camera discussion about the recreational dome did not meet those criteria.
He added the discussions come at a time when the school board is undergoing an accommodation review that could result in the closure of up to 12 schools.
“The problem is, if we can find money for that, why can't we find money to keep our schools open?” he said.
But Blaseg said the school board will always have one-time investments, even as it faces a yearly shortfall of $3.6 million. Nor would the money to fund a soccer dome, a capital expense, come from the same budget as that used for school operations.
While the Rainbow District School Board does have reserves, Blaseg said they will be “exhausted in a heartbeat” if they don't close schools.
