The New Westminster school district will be buying four new portables to help with a growing student population.
The portables will be placed at École Glenbrook Middle School and Queen Elizabeth and Lord Kelvin elementary schools, according to a report by secretary-treasurer Kevin Lorenz.
This year, 151 additional students entered the school district, increasing the Kindergarten to Grade 12 regular student population to 5,919. The number of students in the district is expected to continue to rise in the coming years, according to the district.
Two of the new portables will go to Glenbrook, while the other two will go to Lord Kelvin and Queen Elizabeth, both of which already have portables.
The addition of the four new portables will help mitigate the rising population, but they also represent the “most significant single adjustment” to services and supplies costs in the district’s 2018 amended budget, according to the report.
The district has budgeted $200,000 for the purchase, with installation costs being covered by the existing budget.
Last year, the school district received funding for two new portables, one at Lord Tweedsmuir Elementary School and a second at Qayqayt Elementary School.
The portables added extra classroom space required because of a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in 2016. The court sided with the B.C. Teachers’ Federation over legislation passed by the province in 2002 that stripped clauses from the teachers’ contract about class size, the number of specialist teachers required in schools and the number of special needs students in classrooms.
