The school district will be seeking provincial government support to double the size of a planned expansion of D.P. Todd Secondary School as part of a long-term strategy to deal with capacity issues at the city's schools.
School board trustees voted Tuesday night unanimously in favour of directing staff to work on a package of initiatives that includes holding discussions with the Ministry of Education on the feasibility of adding 300 seats to the school through an expansion and renovation project.
That's double the number that would be achieved under a proposed $9.4-million expansion that tops the list of capital projects trustees approved last June for submission to the Ministry.
The updated proposal is among nine recommendations developed by a catchment and capacity stakeholder review advisory committee and brought to the board via the education services committee, chaired by trustee Ron Polillo.
"It will give us a little bit of a level playing field in terms of student population with College Heights and Duchess and Kelly Road," he said of the D.P. Todd proposal during the meeting.
The school is about 40 years old and its capacity is about 650 students. Three portables are currently stationed on the school's property, Polillo noted during an interview Wednesday.
"We have to make a pretty strong argument to the ministry, but I think we've got a pretty strong business case with the capacity issue, increased enrolment...but there is a lot of competition when you've got districts like Surrey that have 70,000-plus students and it's growing dramatically," he said.
"There's only a certain amount of money that goes around for capital projects, although the government has said loud and clear that one of their priorities is building infrastructure and building capital projects like schools."
Concurrent with the proposal, trustees also directed staff to work on proposals to require students graduating from Spruceland Traditional and Edgewood elementary schools to attend D.P. Todd rather than Duchess Park, starting with the 2020-21 school year.
Those efforts will include consultation processes, Polillo said.
Remaining recommendations include looking at the possibility of adding another section to College Heights Secondary School and further review combining Blackburn, Buckhorn and Pineview elementary schools into a single elementary school at the Blackburn site.
"The challenge there is we've got a couple of schools with declining enrolment and one school that's actually increasing in enrollment and all those schools are getting old," Polillo said Wednesday. "It's a way of building a brand-new, modern facility and combining all those schools into one elementary school that would have more amenities and more options."
As well, staff was directed monitor enrolment at Peden Hill Elementary School and, as required, review the catchment areas for Peden Hill, Westwood and Pinewood elementary schools.
Adding more portables to D.P. Todd for the short term and reviewing the catchment areas for all elementary schools in the D.P. Todd family were also added to staff's worklist, as was the possibility of adding a new section to College Heights Secondary School.
