April 7, 2007
Dear Premier
Campbell
Parents
applauded your 2004 commitment to seeing all BC schools brought up to
acceptable seismic life safety standards by 2019. We appreciated the
leadership you showed in undertaking a provincial assessment to define
the magnitude of the problem.
We are now
into the third year of a 15 year commitment and there does not appear
to be a clear plan. Your government has indicated in the budget that it
is working with districts to develop a longterm plan.
It
is also becoming increasingly clear that what is needed is an integrated approach that focuses
on creating better educational facilities in every sense – including
that they be structurally sound. We hope to that the goal and the
vision which drives the process in every district will be a holisitic
one in the service of better educational buildings in every sense of
the word.
Therefore FSSS asks that the longterm plan include:
• Clear construction timelines for each school
• Transparent annual public reporting at all levels, on
progress of the school seismic upgrades and replacements
• Completion of all upgrades by 2019
• An integrated approach to improving educational
infrastructure, to ensure that at the completion of the project,
the students and teachers of BC can work and learn in the best possible
educational environments that are also structurally sound.
It is also unclear if the government has allocated the
staff required to create and implement an integrated longterm plan. The
15 year commitment seems hollow if the mechanisms to achieve it have
not been put in place.
We recognize that rising construction costs may mean the
original $1.5 billion will be inadequate to complete the
upgrades. It is our opinion that cost can not be a barrier to
ensuring our schools are made safe for our children, as
soon as possible.
We remind the government that
We also reiterate our position that school seismic safety
be regarded as an infrastructure issue that does not
compete for education funding. The 2 basic human rights of children to education and physical
safety should not compete for the same funds. Children deserve their
share of infrastructure funds.
With
regards to government’s plans to upgrade the seismically high risk
legislature - while we applaud all efforts at hazard mitigation and
support the preservation of heritage buildings, we also note that there
are 311 school buildings full of thousands of children which are also
high risk buildings. Many of these school buildings are also heritage
structures. We hope that
plans to upgrade the legislature will not contribute in any way to
slowing of the schools project.
FSSS has
previously obtained information from a freedom of information request
which revealed that BC Building Corp carried out a seismic assessment
of its provincially administered building inventory in 1997.
Six out of 235 buildings were found to be at high risk. 2 have since
been sold.
The
government’s seismic risk assessment of BC schools found that 311 out
of 864 school buildings assessed are at high risk of sustaining severe
damage to structural elements in the event of a moderate to strong
earthquake.
We encourage the provincial government to work with the
federal government to include schools on the critical
infrastructure list as they are in other countries, and to
provide seismic upgrade funding under the National Disaster
Mitigation Program.
This year
the United Nations has launched a global initiative to make schools the
primary focus of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction:
“Governments must
act now to reduce the devastating impact of disasters on
their citizens, especially their children. Strengthening
school buildings and educating students about how to prepare
for disasters will save lives.”
— UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan, October 2006
Perhaps the
most powerful statement on the importance of addressing this issue was
made by the OECD experts group in 2004
“The
motivation for school seismic safety is much broader than the universal
human instinct to protect and love children. The education of children
is essential to maintaining free societies . . . most nations make
education compulsory. A state requirement for compulsory education,
while allowing the continued use of seismically unsafe buildings, is an
unjustifiable practice. School seismic safety initiatives are
based on the premise that the very future of society is dependent upon
the safety of the children of the world.”
Premier Campbell parents
are looking to you to show leadership in putting the mechanisms and
resources in place to make your strong commitment of 2004 a reality.
Sincerely,
Dr. Tracy Monk
Co- Director Families for
School Seismic Safety