At a recent meeting of the Rocky View School Board of Trustees, a change to the policy on community use of school facilities and equipment was passed by trustees.

Chair Todd Brand says the policy was long in need of revision.  "We felt there was too much in the policy and too little that was in the admin procedure," explains Brand.  "We wanted to make it so our staff could work more easily with schools and with outside user groups who want to book our schools.  A big part of the reason we wanted to adjust the policy and the procedure is we want to make it more clear for community groups on how to use our schools and we want to make it more accessible to community user groups."

Brand also says fee adjustment was an important part of the policy change.  "We lose quite a bit of money on community use arrangements, and we still will, but we felt that the margin that we have to pay out in hard costs and what user groups were paying into hard costs, that the gap was too wide and we wanted to narrow that gap.  We're still not even anywhere close to what we'd call cost recovery in terms of when a sports association or another group comes in to rent out facility.  It's still going to be where we're not recovering all of our hard costs, but we wanted to get a bit closer to that."

Brand says while they wanted to bring the money coming in from user groups closer to the amount it costs to run the schools during those times, much of the discussion during the debate of the policy didn't relate to that.

"The policy that the committee was suggesting, did it meet the needs of rural schools as well as urban schools or should there be a difference between how we approach rural and urban schools in terms of the community use policy."

In the end, the policy did pass and a new price schedule goes into effect on September 1st, 2019, however, Brand says the board will continue to revisit the question of whether or not this is a 'one size fits all' policy' or should changes be made to reflect the reality of urban and rural schools in Rocky View.

During the lengthy debate on the policy, some of the trustees suggested circulating the recommended policy to user groups to get their input, and put forward a revision to the motion to have that done.  The board eventually voted that revision down because, in order for the new policy to be ready to implement in the fall, they didn't feel they had the time to get feedback.  They also didn't feel there were significant enough changes made to the policy to warrant asking for feedback.  

Brand says they'll be listening to the comments from user groups in the fall and if one specific group of users say that the new policy or fee schedule is making it difficult for them to rent schools, the board will look and see if any changes need to be made to the policy.  Brand believes the changes will actually make it easier for groups to rent school facilities and he expects to hear positive feedback from them, other than on the fee increases.  

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