The Richard McBride Elementary replacement school is getting bigger and it hasn’t even been approved yet.
The New Westminster school district has been asked by the Ministry of Education to revise its project definition report (PDR) to reflect the latest enrolment numbers.
“Tentatively, we expect that those additional numbers are going to result in the addition of three classrooms,” said secretary-treasurer Kevin Lorenz.
“We’ve had growing enrolment, nearly 100 FTE every year for the past four years. The ministry was interested to see if that would affect our future need at the McBride site.”
The original PDR was submitted by the school district in the summer. It presents the ministry with information about what the school district needs in a new school and the rationale for those needs.
The report on McBride was based on enrolment numbers that were at least a year old, if not two-and-a-half years old, according to Lorenz.
Lorenz couldn’t say if the PDR included new contract language regarding class sizes, part of a new collective agreement between New Westminster teachers and the district – the result of last year’s Supreme Court of Canada ruling that sided with B.C. teachers on language stripped from the teachers’ contract by the former B.C. Liberal government.
“We (were) actually expecting a 10 per cent reduction in available space based on the contract language,” Lorenz told trustees.
The revised report will also include new information on additional space needed for support staff, which would be based on new enrolment numbers, Lorenz said.
Lorenz said the goal is to get the revised report completed as soon as possible.
