The Lord Selkirk School Division(LSSD) hosted a meet and greet with local RMs and the City of Selkirk to talk about the school division, particularly highlighting the value and the difficulty of running the pool through the school division while meeting the needs of students.
The evening was opened by LSSD Board of Trustees Chair Lena Kublick.
“We believe there is tremendous merit in community working together, and in breaking bread together and meeting face to face,” she said.
Jerret Long, Superintendent of the LSSD, then stepped up for the main presentation.
“I’d like to just provide a little bit of a current reality of where we are at in terms of the LSSD, specifically with regard to facilities, and even more specifically with regard to our community pool, which is, I know, something important and near and dear to many of us here,” he said.
Long explained that the aim of the evening was to strengthen ongoing partnerships and raise awareness for current realities concerning the budget, as they, like many other school divisions across Canada, face increasing pressures related to operations and long-term sustainability of community facilities.
“The Selkirk community pool is a prime example. It’s a well-used, regionally significant resource. As you know, it serves our students, it serves our families, and it serves our community. Yet the costs and complexities of maintaining such a facility continue to grow, and I want to highlight a few things,” he said.
The pool is an important resource in our community, with swimming lessons for students in grades 4, 5, 7, and 9 through 12 taking place during school hours. That works out to 2286 students receiving water safety swimming lessons, which are very important, living in Canada. As for the public, about 5000 people, 71 per cent from the RMs of St. Clements, St. Andrews and the City of Selkirk use the pool, so it’s a well-used resource.
The pool schedule is packed full of activities, and it is in constant use.
“Everything from aqua zumba, Selkirk Dolphins, triathlon camps, open swim, Sea Cadets, Special Olympics programming. It’s also now working with Huddle Selkirk (to find ways to) service and help newcomers coming to our community and get them involved in lessons in swimming,” said Long.
The pool isn’t just a place to learn, but a place to connect.
“(The pool provides opportunity for) social cohesion, inclusion, public safety, economic and youth engagement. Providing opportunities for our youth, for our adults and for our community to have a third place to go sometimes, is important. In addition to that, I do want to highlight the health impacts, physical benefits, and rehab benefits — low impact exercise, cardiovascular health, injury rehab, mental health and stress reduction are just some examples of why the pool is really important,” said Long.
After highlighting just how important the Selkirk Community Pool is to the area, Kelly McDonald, the Secretary Treasurer of the LSSD, discussed how the pool is becoming very difficult for the school division to support on its own, despite the benefit to the community.
Funding for the LSSD, like all school divisions, is based on enrollment, and enrollment is up, but so are expenses.
“Currently (as of) 2025, we are back to basically the same level we were in 2013-14, which looks great when you look at the two graphs, until you factor in that in that same time period, the teachers’ collective agreement had over 30 per cent increases over that same time frame. And so, even though we’re back to the same level we were in 2013-14, we’re actually still really far behind where we probably should be,” she said.
The pool itself is also feeling the pinch of wage increases.
“Another big thing which really impacted the pool was the change to minimum wage, which, while it did need to go up, unfortunately, we aren’t able to increase our prices for the pool at the same level if we want to still make it affordable to the people in our community,” said McDonald.
Currently, averaged over the last three years, McDonald explained that the pool is running at a $180,000 deficit per year.
“We’re finding it very difficult to continue to fund the pool right now. And if we had to try to increase our rates so that we would break even, we would have to double them, so that would make it very unaffordable for people in the community,” she said.
Long came back to discuss how this is not an isolated issue in Selkirk, as many communities are closing pools across the province and across Canada.
There is good news, however, the pool in the Comp has been kept up with maintenance-wise, which is a large part of the reason that other pools are closing. The school division even had a recent building audit take place on the pool, which was positive in that it found that the pool was not at its end of life even though it celebrated its 50th anniversary last year.
They do, however, foresee some major repairs that need to be done, such as a full roof replacement in a few years.
With all this in mind, Long proposed that the municipalities work together with the school division to make sure that the pool continues to be a resource for years to come.
“To our LSSD partners here (our ask is) simple. We’re asking you to join in a renewed commitment to keeping our community pool in operation. We are deeply proud to offer swimming opportunities to both our students and the broader community. We want to continue providing these essential programs for many years to come. However, as you probably can tell, we can’t continue to do this alone. Our engineering study, our ongoing maintenance needs, and current funding realities, as Kelly pointed out, all point to the same conclusion. It’s no longer feasible for the division to remain the sole funder of the facility. With that in mind, tonight, we’re just proposing the creation of a Pool Partnership Program. Through this program, we are seeking, yes, financial support to help offset the costs associated with operating and maintaining a pool. Since 1975, this pool has served as a proud and valued community asset. We want to ensure it continues serving our community well into the future. And to achieve that, we’re asking you for your support and collaboration in building a sustainable partnership, one that allows this facility to thrive for years to come,” said Long.
