New Pathway.
This September brought an unpleasant surprise for Ukrainian Saturday Schools, which rent the premises for their classes and activities from the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB). In the invoices, which the schools received from TCDSB in September, the Saturday Schools' facility usage fees went up as high as ten-fold in most cases. According to the representatives of Ukrainian Saturday Schools, who have spoken with the New Pathway, some other fees related to facility use also changed this year, and, overall, the Schools' annual facility rent payments rose, in those cases, from about $5,000 last year to about $20,000 this year.
The Facility Usage Fees schedule available at tcdsb.org has Saturday Schools under Category B, as Not-For-Profit organizations. However, Category B is divided into B1 and B2 sub-categories. Sub-category B1 includes Scouts, Guides, and Air Cadet organizations who this year enjoy facility Usage Fees which are roughly 50% of the fees for sub-category B2.
These lower fees are made possible thanks to the Community Use of Schools Allocation from Ontario's Ministry of Education. The Ministry's spokesperson, Heather Irwin, told the New Pathway that total funding for Community Use of Schools for the 2016-17 year is projected to be $42 million, province-wide.
Angelo Sangiorgio, Associate Director, Planning and Facilities at TCDSB, explained to us that the Board received $2 million from that amount and that those funds were partly used to reduce facility usage fees for Saturday Schools, but at a lower rate than for Scouts, Guides, and Air Cadet organizations. Mr. Sangiorgio explained that the increase in facility usage fees was caused by the need to balance TCDSB's budget that had a $15.3 million deficit as of the end of August 2016. The Board is planning to recover the deficit over three years and one of the targets is to raise permit revenues by $500 thousand annually. After the increase, the TCDSB Facility Usage Fees remain lower than the fees charged by the Toronto District School Board.
TCDSB's new Facility Usage Fees came into effect on January 1, 2016. TCDSB representatives have told the New Pathway that the notice of new rates was e-mailed to the valid permit holders on January 20, 2016. The notice was also posted on the School Board's web-site at that time. In mid-April 2016, TCDSB held consultations about the fees for those seeking permits in the new school year.
However, the representatives of Saturday Schools, who have spoken to the New Pathway, denied receiving any communications from TCDSB about new Facility Usage Fees up until they received invoices from TCDSB in September. How this miscommunication has occurred in those cases remains unclear. But, on top of the higher fees themselves, this miscommunication appears to have created problems for those Schools as they had already collected fees from the parents according to the budgets based on the previous facility use fees. The Schools are now facing a choice whether to charge the parents extra fees (which may reach $150 per student) or turn to the community charities for support.
For the increase in permit fees to be reverted, TCDSB would need to take a decision at the Board level.
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