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We don’t want to lose our school. Our school’s still structurally fine. And our kids get more attention and opportunity in the smaller schools. They’re replacing schools that don’t need to be replaced, and at the same time putting those schools in the hands of corporations. As a taxpayer, it’s offensive."

"We’re saying, ‘look carefully – we don’t need these new schools’. I feel badly for the kids in old, deteriorating schools, and they should be fixed. But it’s insane to replace good buildings that we own and that are in good shape. You don’t replace something that’s not broken."

Robin Bourque, parent of three children, Merigomish N.S.
Part of three-week occupation of Conservative leader John Hamm’s office protesting P3 schools

Corporate classrooms costly

There’s a dangerous experiment being conducted on our public schools. The research lab is located in Nova Scotia, where new school facilities are desperately needed. And public officials eager to keep debt off the books have responded to demand for new schools and the need to replace crumbling infrastructure by allowing corporations to build, own and control new schools through public private partnerships, or P3s. The province will lease back the schools over 20 years and will then pay even more money to buy them back.

P3s are no solution to Nova Scotia’s school needs. While the government attempts to dodge debt that would come from financing school construction itself, communities and taxpayers are left to deal with the fallout. Diminished community accountability, loss of local control and threatened jobs are just some of the P3 problems. And at the end of the day, schools built through public private partnerships cost more than publicly owned and financed buildings.

The province’s first lease-back school was announced in 1994. In 1997 the government — without evaluating the success or failure of the first school — announced every new school in Nova Scotia would be built through public private partnerships. The following year, the Liberals changed the province’s Education Act to require the minister to find the cheapest possible way to build new schools, and by 1999, 56 schools were in the planning stage, under construction or already open. Enter the partners in these so-called "partnerships" — real estate companies, land developers, huge financial corporations and, in a new twist, public sector pension funds.

The scope of the experiment is startling, particularly in light of the fact that far from saving public dollars, lease-back schools end up costing the public millions more, making them an expensive shell game. And other provinces, riding the anti-debt bandwagon, are toying with the idea of lease-back, or P3 schools, ignoring the poor results of the

Nova Scotia experiment. British Columbia and Ontario each have a lease-back school and more may well follow in spite of the failing financial grades. It’s a disturbing trend that will hurt students, workers, communities and taxpayers.