Beginning in January, youngsters will be allowed to hit the gymnasium floor on roller skates at Stawamus Elementary School. But local school officials haven't yet determined whether the use will continue past mid-March or how to pay for any additional floor maintenance costs that it might necessitate.
The Sea to Sky School District (District 48) board recently approved a two-month trial, allowing those aged 5 to 17 to skate on the floor one evening per week.
Bryan Raiser, who in March asked Sea to Sky School District (District 48) officials to allow Squamish school gyms to be used for roller skating, last Thursday (Sept. 26) said he's very excited to have the chance to offer young skaters the chance to train for roller derby and other roller sports.
I keep telling people, 'Don't say roller derby because a lot of people don't know what you're talking about, Raiser said. At its heart, it's a roller skating club that will have a variety of games that we'll play to develop skating skills.
At its core, the focus is on skating skills, team building, exercise and camaraderie. There are a lot of excited boys and girls out there.
District 48 officials hesitated when the request came their way, at least partly because there wasn't a lot of information available about the potential for roller skates to damage wooden gym floors and/or increase maintenance costs, Rick Hume, district facilities coordinator, said on Monday (Sept. 30).
After doing some research, district officials decided on the two-month trial, he said.
Hume said information Raiser supplied about skate wheels that are purported to be no-scuff, and about other places where skating has been allowed was helpful, but didn't tell the whole story.
Most of the places that Mr. Raiser identified were community centres that provide it, he said. We're a school district and that's not our job to provide recreation, although we do want to open up gyms to community use.
There are some cases where it was in smaller towns where there was declining enrolment and they were willing to do just about anything to keep things going.
At the moment, wooden gym floors like those at Stawamus are refinished once a year at a cost of around $5,500 per treatment, Hume said. He suspects that if the use is expanded to cover the whole school year, the floor(s) will have to be refinished once more per year.
As part of the trial, district officials plan to have a custodian clean the floor before each use by skaters, he said. Each cleaning takes about 20 minutes and additional custodial help will be needed to do the work, he said.
The skating group is being charged the going [gym rental] rate plus some of our hard costs, Hume said. We're just looking to recover our costs.
Hume said he plans to report back to the board in mid-February with a recommendation on whether to continue allowing skating. If it's decided that skating should continue, that would allow it to do so without interruption, he said.
Raiser, who has kids aged 9 and 7, said safety is an important element of the program. The proper equipment including the right kind of skates as well as helmets and knee and elbow pads is key to both safety and to ensuring that theres minimal damage to floors.
I'm really hoping that there's no damage to the floors and that we can eventually expand this to all the school gyms, he said.
Raiser said he's applying for grant money to help with start-up costs. The tentative plan is for skating to take place on Wednesday evenings, though no firm start-up date has been set.
If this is successful, we'll certainly be looking to expand to Whistler and Pemberton, Raiser said.
