The provincial government has announced a new school will be built on Burke Mountain, while three existing Tri-City schools will get extra funding to open up space in schools already struggling with overcrowding.
In total, 820 new spaces will be added to School District 43.
Premier John Horgan made the announcement in the courtyard of Smiling Creek elementary school today (Friday), saying the badly needed seats would help get students out of portables and ease parents' commute.
With $47.3 million in funding from the province and $5 million from the Coquitlam school district, the new Sheffield Avenue elementary school is expected to be completed in 2021, providing an extra 430 spaces to SD43. Planners started designing the school a year ago and are nearly finished with the design phase, according to Minister of Education Rob Fleming.
In addition to the new school, the first expansion scheduled to be completed will be at Westwood elementary, where 50 new spaces will be added by 2020 at a cost of $5.7 million.
By 2021, an additional 150 spaces will be added at Dr. Charles Best secondary at a cost of $8.4 million, while that same year, 90 new seats will be available at Panorama Heights elementary at a cost of $6.2 million.
There are currently 110 portables used in Coquitlam schools and only one new elementary has been built in the last decade, according to Minister of Education Rob Fleming.
That’s a problem for communities like Burke Mountain, where breakneck development has outstripped the province’s capacity to provide schools in neighbourhoods burgeoning with young families, many of whom have fled high prices in the city.
“We're happy about this announcement, obviously. But it's a first step out of many,” said Mery Naveh Fraiman, a member of the parents advocacy group Parents for Schools on Burke Mountain.
When many young families started arriving in Burke Mountain more than a decade ago, they saw signs advertising the impending construction of a new school, said Fraiman. But after several years and still no school, many families became so frustrated they decided to pick up and move again, she added.
Burke Mountain got access to its first school when Smiling Creek elementary opened its doors last fall. But with a new school comes a new catchment area, and those borders have thrown up barriers for some of Burke Mountain's neighbourhoods — at least until Sheffield elementary is built.
"Some kids have to wait two years before they can go to school on Burke Mountain," said Fraiman.
It's not just elementary schools that the area lacks. Over the next several years, Burke Mountain's population is on track to overtake that of Port Moody’s. Fraiman points to those numbers when she says families are still short a middle and secondary school, something she hopes will be approved in next year’s budget.
“There's something in the system that's not right if it's allowed to build such a large community [without schools],” she said.
