School district not paying enough attention to West Kelowna: Findlater
‘We need to bonk the school district on the head to pay attention to what we’re doing over here’
– Coun. Doug Findlater
‘It was sort of a rather rude comment (and) one we would certainly disagree with’
– School district chair Moyra Baxter
West Kelowna should “bonk” the school district on its head for its poor response to the educational needs of Westsiders, Coun. Doug Findlater says.
Trustees and administrators on the Kelowna-dominated board aren’t paying enough attention to how fast West Kelowna is growing, nor are they adequately responding to pressures for new educational facilities, Findlater says.
“We are dwarfed on this side of the lake by Kelowna, and the school district’s planning has not kept up with West Kelowna,” Findlater said at a recent meeting.
“We need to bonk the school district on the head to pay attention to what we’re doing over here,” Findlater said at a recent meeting. “The growth that we have is just as significant as Kelowna’s. I know they need new schools and replacing schools, I get that. But we need to get their attention.”
The relative rarity of one local public official making that kind of comment about another local public organization has already drawn a response from Central Okanagan Public Schools. District officials will write a letter to West Kelowna taking exception to the tone and content of Findlater’s comments.
“It was sort of a rather rude comment (and) one we would certainly disagree with,” board chair Moyra Baxter said Friday in an interview.
“We certainly have been constantly talking to West Kelowna,” Baxter said.
To illustrate his point, Findlater pointed to the planned demolition of George Pringle elementary school after classes end this month and the construction of a new high school on the Westbank property, set to open in September 2026.
Students attending George Pringle will be distributed to other elementary schools. Findlater said the whole plan demonstrated a lack of foresight and was a
“patch job.”
He also criticized plans by the district to direct young people from the massive Goat’s Peak residential development, which will involve hundreds of new homes but on which construction has yet to start, to Peachland elementary school.
“That’s a disincentive for anyone to build or buy or live in that particular neighborhood,” Findlater said.
But Baxter said the devising of school
catchment areas is a complicated and ongoing process, balancing demands with available school resources, and noted it will be many years before there are substantial numbers of new homes in the Goat’s Peak area.
“They’ll have to be bussed somewhere, I’m sure,” Baxter said. “The government won’t just suddenly give us money to build a new school if there’s space at an existing school within a reasonable distance. And quite frankly, that’s considered a reasonable distance, from Goat’s Peak to Peachland.”
“Who knows how far into the future this will be an issue. It will be years and years,” Baxter said.