School board wants Westsyde Elementary reopened, more capital funding

Dec 18, 2018 | 3:28 PM

KAMLOOPS — Increased enrolment rates across schools in Kamloops have led to the school board moving forward with plans to reopen Westsyde Elementary School.

School District 73’s Board of Education unanimously voted to reopen the school — which closed in 2006 — at a meeting last night (Dec. 17), with a projected reopening date for the 2019 school year.

“David Thompson (Elementary) is over capacity,” board chair Kathleen Karpuk says. “They’re currently at about 125 per cent capacity utilization because we’ve got several portables out there, The school’s getting to the size where we can’t add any more portables because it becomes too unwieldy, and Westsyde Elementary is out in that same area so it just makes sense for us to reopen that school.”

Karpuk says there are enrolment pressures across the city from Dallas to Aberdeen and six more portables for Kamloops schools are projected for the next year. Seven more portables are projected for the year after that. It’s not just elementary schools that are feeling enrolment pressures, Karpuk says.

“Within the next five years we expect that we’ll be adding five more portables to Valleyview Secondary which will bring that up to 14 portables,” she says. “It’ll get up to about somewhere between 180 (to) 183 per cent capacity there.”

Karpuk says the board is going to be adding a request to the capital plan for an extension at Sahali Secondary in addition to other addition requests including at Westmount Elementary, South Kamloops Secondary, along with a new school in Pineview Valley.

“We’ve also been advised that when looking at the long-range plan that the City of Kamloops has, that we may need additional schools in Aberdeen,” she says. “We’re looking at the potential of two new elementary schools and one more secondary school in that area.”

On top of infrastructure needs, Karpuk says the board will be asking for four new school buses next year, three new buses the year after that, and another bus for the third year.

She emphasizes that capital funding from the province is needed to ease enrolment pressures.

“We really need to have that capital funding from the province. A lot of the pressures — especially through Aberdeen — would be lifted if we got the new school at Pineview Valley,” she says. “A lot of pressures with Westmount — we would be able to deal with a lot of the traffic and parking issues at Westmount if we were able to have the addition there.”

“That would free up space for us to expand the parking lot, make it safer for those students being dropped off in the traffic there. So really a lot of this comes down to being able to access capital dollars for additions and new schools.”

For the full report on enrolment pressures and funding, go here.