The New Westminster School District may have to look at building taller schools or sharing spaces with other developments as it looks at its long-term capital plan.
That long-term plan, which is approved by the school board annually, went before an operations committee meeting Tuesday, which passed the $250-million plan along to the school board for final approval.
That plan, which forecasts more than two decades into the future, will eventually make its way to the Ministry of Education to consider how to plan its capital investments in B.C. schools.
Among the top-three priorities are three new schools – a middle school and an elementary school, both in the downtown core area of New West, and an elementary school closer to Highway 1 in the north end of town.
The district is also looking at an expansion of 12 classrooms and a gym at Queen Elizabeth Elementary School in Queensborough.
For those two core locations, the school district will also need to acquire properties to build the schools – for the elementary school, enough space for 490 kindergarten to Grade 5 students, and for the middle school, enough space for 500 to 700 Grade 6 to Grade 8 students.
In fact, the priciest item on the list of investments – at $92 million, over $10 million more than the cost of construction of all three schools combined – is the site acquisition for the middle school. The second-highest cost on the list, at $62 million, is the site acquisition for the elementary school.
By comparison, construction for the two elementary schools are estimated at around $23 million each, and the construction cost of the middle school is estimated at $36 million.
School board chair Mark Gifford said with such a geographically small municipality and a rapidly densifying core, there’s little to no space available for those schools.
That lack of space means the district may have to be “getting creative, looking at what a vertical development might look like or how it gets integrated into some of the other development plans,” specifically referencing the core-area middle school.
“We’ve seen that in some areas of Vancouver, downtown Vancouver,” Gifford said.
The Ministry of Education has guidelines set for how large a site should be when looking at construction new schools, based on anticipated enrolment, but school district secretary-treasurer Kim Morris said those guidelines can be played around with.
“When you look at land assembly at $62 million and a school [construction] at $22 million, the investment really isn’t there, and so then you start to talk to the ministry about some of those creative solutions that Mark’s talking about,” Morris said.
She added that the ministry is receptive to the school district potentially getting creative with its school development plans.
“They can’t afford $62 million in New West.”
In total, the long-term plan adds up to about $251 million in capital spending, and includes investments as low as $120,000 for playground equipment for Queen Elizabeth Elementary.
