The New Westminster school district learned Tuesday that it will get two much needed new schools, but replacing the aging New Westminster Secondary School is still under review.
The Ministry of Education and the school district signed project agreements on Monday for more than $30 million to build a new elementary school and middle school. John Robson Elementary School will be rebuilt on the former St. Mary's Hospital site. The current Robson school will then be torn down, and a new middle school will be built on that site.
"It's the end of a long process, and people have been getting impatient, understandably so," board of education chair James Janzen told The Record. "It's a good day. - We are finally able to have something tangible to show people."
Parents in New Westminster have waited years for movement on the bid to build three new schools. The announcement means the district will finally have a middle school for students on the west side of the city.
"We've been working on finishing the middle school model for 15 or 16 years," Janzen said.
The elementary school is expected to be built by early 2014, while the middle school is expected to be completed by the summer of 2015.
Education Minister George Abbott said work continues on the high school replacement project.
"There's funding there for the secondary school, and, as we move forward with the elementary and middle school projects, we will be working with the district on the secondary project," Abbott told The Record. "This has been a pretty complex series of projects with a number of complexities around the site. (It's) logistically challenging because it involves elementary, middle and secondary schools. There have been lots of challenges with this project, and I certainly have learned to appreciate all of those challenges."
Abbott acknowledged that the high school building is "long in the tooth" but said the school is educationally sound.
"I think no one should question the quality of education that is being produced in that school. Is it looking a bit rough around the edges, particularly outside? Yes, it is. But it's still a very fine school and producing wonderful results academically."
The school district's construction timeline had the elementary school built first, then the middle school, in order to accommodate students during construction of the new high school.
"Part of the deal is doing the middle school so that we can get some of the Grade 8s off the site before we start construction on the new (high) school," Janzen said.
Board of education vice-chair Michael Ewen echoed Janzen, saying, "This is the first step in replacing the high school. It was always going to be last. It's thrilling that we are moving forward, and hopefully within the next year we can get a project agreement on the high school."
Jim Alkins, project manager for the new schools, said the soil conditions at the high school site are still being investigated.
"We need to do some additional investigations on the site conditions so that we have more certainty around the cost of construction," said Alkins. "We are dealing with the former uses on the site. There are some uses that have some potential environmental impact that we need to inspect."
The site was once a cemetery and was also a dumping ground.
"(There) may have been some forms of dumped waste oil or something. We'll have to clean it up," Alkins said. "There's evidence that that was the use. We just don't know how much use there was because it was so long ago, and what their potential environmental impacts will be, and so we'll do some additional testing. We'll probably do some ground-penetrating radar, and we may do some onsite excavations just to verify the soil conditions."
Janzen, Ewen and Alkins, along with superintendent John Woudzia and secretary-treasurer Brian Sommerfeldt, made the trek to Victoria to sign the agreements on Monday.
Abbott pulled New Westminster MLA Dawn Black up from the legislature for the agreement signing.
"I thought it was a very classy move on the minister's part," Ewen said. "We need to thank Dawn because Dawn has advocated completely, tirelessly on behalf of these schools."
The middle school project's construction budget is $17.6 million. The middle school will provide 20 classrooms for 500 students in grades 6 to 8. The elementary school will provide five kindergarten classes and 18 elementary classes for 100 full-day kindergarten students and 550 students in grades 1 to 5. Construction of the elementary school is scheduled to begin this fall. The St. Mary's site was bought in 2010 for $8.5 million. The new elementary school's construction budget is $13.5 million.
The schools will include neighbourhood learning centres to provide additional services to support children, families and residents throughout the year.
The services will include early childhood development, child care and family counselling programs, as well as English language learning, health services and crossgenerational drop-in programs, a Ministry of Education media release states.
