The New Westminster school district isn’t getting any money for land or schools in the Ministry of Education’s major capital funding announcements this spring.
School District 40 had submitted a $213-million capital plan request for 2023/24, including $65 million in funding for a new, 500-student middle school in the Fraser River zone (the centre and west side of the city). It also asked for $30 million to buy land for that future school.
It didn’t get either.
But there’s a sliver of good news for the space-starved district: It’s been given the green light to move forward on land acquisition for a new middle school in the West End.
The district's secretary-treasurer, Bettina Ketcham, said the district is "pleased and thrilled" that it's being allowed to move ahead with site acquistion.
But she cautioned it doesn't mean the district has permission to buy land yet.
“It is important to note that this is not an approval of the land acquisition itself, but an acknowledgement of the ministry’s support to carry out the next steps of additional analysis that will lead possible future funding approvals,” she said in a report presented at the school board’s operations committee meeting earlier this evening (Tuesday, April 11).
Ketcham’s report notes there’s no specific site attached to the support. The district will now move forward with the work to identify an appropriate site for a third middle school in mainland New Westminster to help alleviate the space crunch at both Fraser River and Glenbrook middle schools.
Ketcham told trustees the idea is to find land in the West End of New Westminster, since the mainland area of the city already has Glenbrook middle school for the east side and Fraser River for the centre. Having a West End middle school, she noted, would give students from that end of town a more accessible neighbourhood school.
SD40 will work closely with both the City of New Westminster and the Ministry of Education on the land acquisition, she noted.
Ketcham noted the district will still need to submit another request for the actual building of the school, and that request will remain a priority in its capital planning submissions for next year.
Fraser River elementary school still awaiting funding
The school district is also still awaiting word on funding for a new, 600-student elementary school it’s planning for the Fraser River Middle School site.
That school wasn’t part of the district’s capital planning requests for 2023/24, since the ministry gave the green light to SD40 last year to work on a concept plan for the school.
The district had initially hoped to receive word on funding for the school by March of this year — but it learned in February that the hoped-for approval had been delayed. At the time, the district said it will likely be at least June before funding is announced.
Ministry will fund renovations of former daycare spaces
But there was one other piece of good news for SD40 in the ministry’s capital funding announcements: the district will receive money to renovate community spaces in both École Qayqayt Elementary School and Fraser River Middle School, which formerly housed daycare centres, to make way for more classrooms.
The district amended its capital plan submission in the fall to include a request for money for those renovations.
The amount of that funding has yet to be announced, since both projects are now in the business development stage.
“The ministry has acknowledged the district’s pressures and have moved us on to business case development for these projects,” Ketcham noted in a report. “This does not mean the work is funded yet, but that the ministry will consider the request, based on additional work that needs to be done and information that needs to be gathered. Since receiving notification of this support, the district is well into drafting its business case and anticipates a quick turnaround given the smaller scope of these requests.”
Ketcham told trustees at the meeting that the district is "well underway" on creating the business cases and should have them ready to submit to the ministry before the end of the month.
Trustee Maya Russell lauded the announcements for both the renovations funding and the business case for land acquisition, noting the need for a middle school has been part of the district's long-range facilities planning for several years.
"These are slow but steady steps, and I hope that families see them with confidence," she said.
Rapid growth, small school sites have created a space crisis in SD40
The daycare centres that are moving out of Qayqayt and FRMS are being moved farther out of the downtown area, to Lord Tweedsmuir Elementary School in the West End and F.W. Howay Elementary School in Massey-Victory Heights — a move that drew criticism from parents, who said the loss of child care in the downtown core will be a hardship for families.
All of the district’s funding requests and plans relate back to the same underlying issue in the New Westminster school district: a lack of space.
The city’s rapid population growth, combined with small school sites, means all the district’s elementary schools are at or over capacity already. Though the district was able to avoid registration by lottery for the fall of 2023, it is eyeing the possibility for the future of three of its most crowded schools: Qayqayt, Lord Kelvin Elementary School and Queen Elizabeth Elementary School, where a planned expansion won’t open until the 2025/26 school year.
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