More portables for MBSS?

The only high school in West Kelowna needs four more portable classrooms to accommodate its burgeoning enrollment.

Mount Boucherie Senior Secondary has nine portables, as well as 54 regular classrooms contained within the main building.

While School District 23 plans to add the portables, there isn’t enough room at the cramped site on Cameron Road to build the necessary parking that would normally be required by the addition, so educators will ask City of West Kelowna councillors next week to relax the normal parking rules so the addition of the portables can go ahead.

“The school site is challenged to develop the additional parking stalls on site,” reads part of a letter to the city from David Widdis, the school district’s planning manager.

The school’s basketball courts have already been removed to make space for portables, and the overall site is hemmed in by the proximity of the mountain for which the school is named, as well as civic administration and recreation offices owned by the city.

Currently, MBSS has 1,476 students in Grades 9-12. In 2006, there were 13 portable classrooms at the school, but a major building addition in 2008 resulted in some portables being removed.

Enrolment has been rising over the last decade, however, and the provincial government’s 2017 order requiring smaller class sizes has once again increased the pressure for more portables.

Relaxation of the normal parking rules is said to be a temporary request, as construction of a new high school in West Kelowna is the district’s No. 1 priority.

However, no funding is yet in place.