What price for physical fitness?
It’s a question currently being bounced around by DCVI athletics staff and the town, as tightening education budgets and the need for the Pyramid Centre to make money come to loggerheads.
Ian Moore, head of DCVI’s athletics department, is requesting that the town drop its $40 per hour aquatics rental fee (which includes two lifeguards)  completely -- or, at the most, pay $15 per hour.
Physical education classes used the pool every Thursday during the 2009/10 school year; however, “by mid-semester, it was apparent we could not afford it,” Moore told the community services subcommittee last week.
At the $40 per hour rate, this amounts to $650, which Moore says is a quarter of the entire athletics department budget.
The town researched the cost of school swim programs in eight other areas in the region. The London YMCA charges $90 per hour, plus a $12 per hour charge for a lifeguard; Ingersoll charges $89.50 per hour, with two guards (fewer than 40 students are charged $2.30 per child, with a guarding fee of $15 per hour), to give a few examples.
While the Avon Maitland District School Board doesn’t pay to use the Stratford YMCA pool, it is because the YMCA uses school facilities for its own before- and after-school programs.
As for asking parents to help subsidize the aquatics portion of the curriculum, it is not allowed.
“If families can’t pay, we can’t say the student can’t do it,” Moore explained.
Moore brought a number of letters of support with him to the meeting, both from other schools and from community groups that use schools for after-hours events, such as scouting.
Bill Osborne took issue with the wording of one of the letters, from recent Holy  Name of Mary school principal Greg Haber, which stated that charging the schools was “an erosion of fair and equitable access” to town facilities such as the pool.
Osborne said that, with DCVI already getting a 55 per cent discount off of the normal $89.25 hourly rate (for up to 49 students), “what you want us to be is fair-er,” he said, noting that the high school’s rate isn’t being fair to other groups such as those on fixed incomes, service clubs, and the like.
“This does have a mushrooming effect,” he said of the potential for other groups to demand the same kind of discount.
Bill Mustard noted that “someone has to pay” to maintain the Pyramid Centre. “I think your budget is too small,” he told Moore. “The school board has to step up to pay that cost... we’ve already stepped up (with reduced rates and by building the facility).”
Moore agreed that the town has stepped up, so to speak, by building the facilities, but added that parents of students are paying for the facility through their taxes.
“And by allowing the kids to come in (and use the facility), you’re going to recouperate your costs down the line,” Moore believes, with healthier adults that use and enjoy the facility -- and are less of a burden on the heath care system as a result.
“As leaders in the community, we need to say ‘yes, this will cost us money, but it’ll pay off in the future.’”
Osborne took issue with the entirety of the Avon Maitland School Board; the town pays roughly $2,500 to rent a Central School classroom for the Best Start program -- as well as cover the cost of toilet paper and sidewalk salt -- when the Huron-Perth Catholic District School Board lets the town use Holy Name of Mary for free.
“But if they don’t waive that fee, we’re at a stalemate,” Moore cautioned. “For Little Falls Public School to be right across the street and DCVI two blocks away and not be able to afford the pool, the community will be disappointed.”
Community services committee chair Coun. Gary Boyce explained that “the bottom line is dollars -- obviously,  you folks have a major problem because you don’t have money; we’re in a tough position because we have taxpayers who want to better manage our money.”
Mustard echoed this thought. “If the PRC was not a user-fee structure, it wouldn’t exist,” he said.
The committee recommended that a letter be sent to Moore and DCVI to request waiving the Best Start rental rate at Central in exchange for the school paying a $40 hourly rate to rent the pool -- the same rate that other schools in St. Marys would pay.