The future New Westminster Secondary School is the “right size” for the city for years to come, according to the Ministry of Education and New Westminster school district.
Education Minister Rob Fleming joined New Westminster school trustees, senior district admin and local MLA Judy Darcy at a groundbreaking ceremony last week to mark the beginning of construction of the new high school.
When it officially opens in September 2020, the new $106.5-million New Westminster Secondary School will house 1,900 students in the three-storey facility.
“This is the right size for the school going forward decades into the future,” Fleming said at the event.
But in March, superintendent Karim Hachlaf told the Record he was worried the capacity of the new high school was inadequate for the projected student enrolment. He was especially concerned that the school would be far too small 10 to 15 years from now.
But Hachlaf isn’t worried about overpopulation anymore.
“Indeed I had said that and that’s why I’m happy to provide clarity on that. Those comments were premature, and I can say this confidently,” he told the Record this week.
Hachlaf said that since his previous conversation with the Record, the New Westminster school district has begun a long-range facilities planning process and an outside consultant has confirmed enrolment projections for the high school will be well within the new school’s capacity for years to come.
“To our satisfaction, what it showed is our new high school that’s built for the current capacity is going to be more than sufficient to sustain enrolment growth 15 to 20 years out,” he said.
“So it has confirmed some confidence in our numbers that any potential expansion that we were initially considering is not required.”
Because the existing New Westminster Secondary School was built over a cemetery, once it’s torn down the land will be turned into a park to memorialize the people buried at the Douglas Road Cemetery between 1860 and 1920.
Taking this into consideration, earlier this year the school district asked the Ministry of Education for an extra $6 million to build a fourth floor on the new high school. Hachlaf had said that a fourth floor would be ideal to accommodate a growing student population at a school site that doesn’t have room for portables.
The ministry denied the district’s request.
“We had a discussion about that additional request, and today the district and the ministry have agreed on the exact contours of the project. We didn’t want to experience any additional delays,” Fleming said.
“It (the school) will house 1,900 students. There’s room for an additional 10 per cent more students, so the capacity could be as high as 2,100. Because of the block schedule and the way the school will be configured so there’s lots of room for growth.”
Hachlaf agreed and hopes the long-range planning process will help ease the community’s worries that the new high school is insufficient.
But the information included in the long-range plan isn’t available to the public just yet, he said.
Currently, trustees are discussing the plan at the in-camera level. Hachlaf expects the report will be made public in the early fall at which time the public will have an opportunity to provide feedback and comments to the school district.
“These numbers are not intended to be private,” he said.
