The public board has at least 10 empty schools — time to sell?

Out-of-use buildings cost up to $135,000 in annual maintenance

Hamilton’s public school board currently has at least 10 empty school buildings, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in maintenance.

An out-of-use school costs approximately $35,000 to $135,000 a year to maintain, depending on size, Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) spokesperson Shawn McKillop said in an email.

A larger building like downtown’s Sir John A. Macdonald — whose future is in limbo after the province rejected a request for funding to build an elementary school in its place — would have a maintenance price tag of between $85,000 and $135,000.

Two buildings — Sir Isaac Brock and Sir John A. Macdonald — are “vacant” and “require trustee direction to staff on next steps,” spokesperson Rob Faulkner said in an email.

At least eight former HWDSB schools — Beverly Central, Dr. John Seaton, Elizabeth Bagshaw, Glen Echo, Green Acres, Mountain View, Queen’s Rangers, Spencer Valley — are “in process of disposition,” meaning they’re currently for sale.

In order to sell — or sever and sell — a property, boards must follow several steps.

Once a property has been declared surplus, it must first be circulated among “preferred agents,” including school boards, the city, post-secondary institutions and organizations, per provincial regulation. If there’s no interest, it can be sold on the open market.

Typically, buildings are sold one to two years after being declared surplus, McKillop said.

But school boards may keep buildings for a period of time after they’ve been vacated by students and staff before deciding to sell. McKillop said this is to ensure the board won’t need the building down the road.

“Properties may be part of a future ask for a new build or consolidation of existing (schools) on that site,” he said.

In 2004, the HWDSB sold the former Scott Park school — now occupied by Bernie Custis, opened in 2019, a parking lot and a recreation centre — for $650,000 only to pay to expropriate the property from a developer about a decade later.

Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board (HWCDSB), however, has no surplus properties, but leases several to external organizations for an annual revenue of about $850,000.

Others, like the Nicholas Mancini Centre, which used to be Christ the King Elementary School, are used as board administrative spaces.

The public board says it has no income from leased properties.

Catholic board chair Pat Daly said when a school is closed, the board may retain the building to determine “what direction (development) moves in the future in our city.”

“We don’t own a lot of properties in the city, so we’re very, very careful to make sure that if we do sell a building, that it’s very unlikely we’ll have a need in the future,” he said.

The last Catholic school to close was St. Brigid in 2018. The building is currently being used as a holding school for students from St. Patrick’s, which is being rebuilt.

The public board is also using two former schools — Barton and Frank Panabaker North — to house students temporarily while Sherwood is renovated and Rousseau is built.

Daly attributes the absence of vacant buildings to “wise counsel” from senior staff and “future-oriented, difficult decisions” to close and consolidate schools in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

“We made some ... some very, very good decisions in terms of both accommodation and facilities,” said the longtime chair.