With enrollment rising, the Kootenay-Columbia school district is contemplating something that hasn’t happened in over 25 years: building a new school in Castlegar.
While it’s all very preliminary, the district recently asked the city to consider providing land for such a project.
“As we look to review school replacement needs and potential capacity issues due to growth in student enrollment and the desire to incorporate daycare and before and after school care in future planning, we know this is of mutual interest and benefit to work together,” superintendent Katherine Shearer wrote in a letter to the city.
She requested a letter of support from the city to support their application to the Ministry of Education for a new school. However, it’s not known whether the school would complement the existing ones or replace one of them. Nor is it clear what sort of capacity or grade configuration it might have.
“The fun part of planning is that you don’t know until you gather all the data,” says board chair Catherine Zaitsoff. “We don’t know what it looks like. There are strict guidelines and things you have to follow for the ministry. Right now we’re in the assessment stage.”
City council agreed last month to provide the letter of support indicating the city would commit to identifying potential sites for a new school during the upcoming review of Castlegar’s official community plan.
City staff said while the school district didn’t provide a minimum size, they used the site plan of the new Glenmerry Elementary in Trail, which is headed to tender. It shows an area of two hectares to accommodate 475 elementary students, 80 kindergarten students, and 83 daycare students.
Staff said they expected a project in Castlegar would require at least 1.5 hectares.
“The city does not have an abundance of land of sufficient size and suitable topography to
accommodate a new school site,” they wrote in providing an inventory of such city-owned lands. However, they added the list did not represent recommended sites, as most had “constraints to development due to their topography, lot shape, or their use as public facilities/parks.”
The city recently awarded the contract for the OCP review, which is expected to be completed next year. The work plan calls for “significant public consultation,” which staff say “provides a timely opportunity to consult with the community to identify appropriate sites for a new/replacement school and/or strategies for any necessary property acquisition.”
Zaitsoff agrees the OCP review provides a good opportunity to study the issue. The district, she adds, is updating its enrollment projections and long-range facilities plan.
“As part of that work, we need to consult with communities to make sure our needs are aligned with theirs,” she says. “Increasing enrolment is a good problem to have. We hope it continues.”
The last new school school built in Castlegar was Twin Rivers Elementary, which opened in its present form in 1996. Through the late 1990s and early-to-mid-2000s, enrollment was on the downswing and the district was mostly involved in closing schools, including Valley Vista, Tarrys, and Woodland Park elementaries as well as Kinnaird Middle School.
