They’re tired of waiting and want answers now – that’s the feeling from frustrated local parents who are sending a letter to the Ministry of Education calling for immediate funding for the long-overdue replacement of New Westminster Secondary School.
Alarmed by recent reports in The Record that the project, which has been in talks for well over a decade, is being held up because of site issues, F.W. Howay Elementary parent Paul Johansen drafted the brief letter calling for the immediate approval of the project. The district parent advisory council passed Johansen’s letter at its meeting on Monday.
“We just want to put the pressure up because I think they are waffling on the funding,” Johansen said. “We need to make this a priority.”
If the funding isn’t approved immediately, Johansen’s letter, which will be sent to both the Ministry of Education and Premier Christy Clark, requests that the ministry advise on the criteria required to get funds for a new school.
District superintendent John Gapitman, board of education chair Jonina Campbell and project manager Jim Alkins met with Education Minister Peter Fassbender and his staff last Thursday to discuss the complicated project, which is made much more complex because the school was built over an old cemetery and the site has poor soil conditions.
Fassbender told them that he wanted to talk further with his director of capital about the expensive and complicated project and then they would talk again, Gaiptman told The Record.
“It was a very nice tone to the meeting, but our board chair was very clear,” Gaiptman said. “She outlined everything that we had done to this point, which is substantial and then said … Mr. Minister, please let us know when we can expect the funding so we can put shovel to ground or, if not, will you please let us know exactly what we need. We also invited the director of capital projects to a board meeting so that he can let us know.”
The minister told the New Westminster delegation that his ministry needed more time to discuss the project and said they’d get back to the district, though he didn’t want to commit to a date, Gaiptman said.
The recently hired superintendent applauded the local parents for sending a letter to the minister.
“I think it’s great,” he said. “I think that this is not just about New Westminster Secondary School, it’s about our community, and I applaud them for sending the letter.
“I think that people have to know that this is bigger than just a school. When you have one school in a good-size community, one high school, it becomes what you hope schools will be, and that is the central point for so many things that are occurring in the community, and so for parents to take the time and to send the letter, oh my, I applaud them.”
Parents in the city have waited years for a new high school. The current school – the only high school in a city of more approximately 60,000 people – is more than 60 years old and looks its age with chipped paint, rotting wood and the occasional rat sighting.
The ministry has funded construction of two new schools in New Westminster – an elementary school and a middle school, which are currently being built.
The plan all along has been to build those two new schools first and then the replacement high school.
