Queenston School shut out in latest capital announcement

When $60 million was allocated to school capital projects in the recent provincial budget, the Queenston School Gym Committee was initially encouraged.

However, it soon became apparent that a gym for the River Heights school was not one of the 110 capital projects to be funded.

“The school is 77 years old, and we still don’t have a gym,” Colleen McFadden, chair of the gym committee, said flatly while waiting to pick up her kids. “We pay our taxes. We’ve been paying our school taxes for 77 years, since the school was built. We’ve paid for a gym over and over, and the facilities here still fall very short.”

The school currently has a ‘multi-purpose room’ that is used for physical activity but McFadden said that facility falls short of what students need, in addition to falling short of the province’s minimum standards for physical education facilities.

“We have floor space that is much smaller than it should be under the guidelines set down by the province,” she said. “We can’t even play organized sports, such as volleyball or basketball, because the ceilings are too low.”

McFadden has been a member of the gym committee for five years, and currently has three children attending the school. She chose to have her kids attend Queenston, despite its lack of proper facilities, because she was impressed by the staff and the community within the school.

McFaddden’s sentiments are echoed by Barb McDonald, another member of the gym committee, who has two kids at Queenston.

“Having moved to Winnipeg, we kind of went around and checked out the schools in the area, and when I came here, this one had the largest community feel, as a school,” said McDonald. Even though the school may not get a gym while her children are attending it, McDonald says the school should have the proper facilities for future students.

Safety is a major concern for the members of the gym committee, who said that there have been several “incidents,” in which children have been injured while trying to do physical activity in the current facility. This has resulted in students being told to “take it easy” during physical education.

“It hits home when you have your kids being told not to run to full capacity,” said McFadden. “Can you imagine if we sent our kids to math class and told them only to use half their brains?”

The Winnipeg School Division, meanwhile, said it can only undertake so many projects at once, and that it has a list of capital projects. The latest funding announcement allows the division to build a new gymnasium for George V school, which means Queenston is currently second, behind Kelvin High School, on the capital list.

“I can understand the frustration that parents of students at Queenston are feeling,” said Kristine Barr, chair of the Winnipeg School Division board. “But just the fact of the matter is that there are a very limited number of provincial dollars available for these types of projects, so therefore we just have to wait until the funds are available.”