School board selling centre - Lyndwood School Cover-up - Mississauga News

The Peel District School Board is selling its Centre for Education and Training (CET), the not-for-profit corporation it created more than a decade ago.

The CET is not the prosperous endeavour it once was and after having to write off almost $8 million in operational debt last year, the organization has been offered to the highest bidder. The right buyer and price have been found for the centre and the Board’s for-profit operation known as the Halton Business Institute (HBI).

While the deal is awaiting government approval, Board officials are refusing to release details of the sale until they get the official blessing from Queen’s Park.

The Peel Board established the CET in 1996 as a not-for-profit corporation developing and providing a wide range of education and career training programs to the general public.

Locations in Peel, Halton and Toronto offer continuing education, employment assistance and corporate training programs as well as programs and services for recent immigrants.

The CET was set up to run at arms-length from the Board, operating with its own board of directors and staff. It still generates millions of dollars in revenue, mostly from federally-funded contracts to provide community services and programs.

When the Board established the corporation, there was hope any profits produced could flow back to the school board to support its operations.
At one time, the centre proved highly successful and was making significant contributions to Peel Board coffers. That was before the federal government tightened access to grants, accusations senior staff members were misappropriating funds, a police fraud investigation and millions of dollars in operating debt.

Legal proceedings eventually salvaged the reputations of former staff, but the CET’s best days had passed.

Swimming in red ink, the organization had to borrow about $7.6 million from the Peel Board to cover operational costs. The CET has essentially been a break-even operation since the Board wrote off that loan.

With an eye for something more lucrative, in October 2003 the Board purchased the HBI, a for-profit private career college. The college and CET were operated under the umbrella of the Quality and Continuous Improvement Centre.

The two organizations are now a package deal on the auction block.

“We’re in the process of finalizing its sale,” said Peel Board chair Janet McDougald. “We’re actually selling HBI and with HBI we’ve included CET.”
According to Peel Board administrators, the search for potential buyers began this past spring.

McDougald said the Board wants out of the business. Competition in this sector has grown and profitability has been relatively lacklustre, she suggested.
Expectations are the CET will break even this year, said the Board’s associate director Carla Kisko.

While the CET and HBI are not costing the Board any money, McDougald explained, officials are uneasy about the future given the bad experience with CET and an increasingly competitive marketplace.

The continuing education programs that were a part of CET have now returned to the Board, McDougald said.

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