Students at Eighth Avenue Learning Centre in Port Alberni are breathing clean air, thanks to a new $360,000 ventilation system.
The federal government included the refit as part of a March 2024 announcement that $4.2 million in federal and provincial funding has been spent on ventilation upgrades in eight schools across B.C. However, School District 70 (Pacific Rim) director of operations Greg Roe said the work was completed four months ago.
“We received that funding almost a year ago,” Roe said. The project included upgrading the HVAC with new unit ventilators, air handlers, controls and other related works.
“You could consider it replacement of equipment that was at the end of its useful life. It’s kind of a refurbishment of the whole HVAC system except for the boiler.”
The ventilation unit at Eighth Avenue Learning Centre was highest on the list of the school district’s capital project priorities when Roe applied to the provincial education ministry for funding. The federal infrastructure grant was unexpected, he said. It came from the COVID-19 Resilience Infrastructure Stream of the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program. The federal government contributed $290,000 while the B.C. provincial government kicked in $72,500.
The school district ranks all systems in its facilities in a database to keep track of what is nearing replacement. “We use local knowledge, if we see or hear something is starting to fail,” he added.
The Port Alberni ventilation upgrade was one of eight in the province announced in March by Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Sean Fraser and Minister of Education and Child Care Rachna Singh.