Lakefield District Public School to open Jan. 8
LAKEFIELD - Public elementary school students in the Lakefield area will be returning from their Christmas break to a new school in the new year.
Lakefield District Public School was supposed to have opened up for the start of the school year in September in the renovated former Lakefield District Secondary School facility, but construction complications pushed back the opening.
Students have remained at Ridpath Junior Public School across town on Ermatinger Street, where five portables were set up to accommodate Grade 7 and 8 students for the first four months of the school year.
LDPS will be a junior kindergarten to Grade 8 school located in the former LDSS, which closed as a high school in June 2016 due to declining enrolment. It will replace Ridpath and Lakefield Intermediate, the Grade 7 and 8 wing at LDSS which has been demolished. Buckhorn Public School students will also attend LDPS for Grades 7 and 7.
Construction began in April but contractor Steelcore Construction Ltd. determined by June that the timeline was too tight to complete the project by September and set December as the completion date, citing complications with the plumbing work.
The $7,418,450 contract for the project was awarded to Steelcore in the spring.
Steelcore now reports the construction will be completed this month. But the school won’t open until Jan. 8 to allow for up packing and preparing classrooms as well as other move-in work, including cleaning, waxing floors, installing Smart-Boards and other technology.
The new school will have a 49-space child-care facility for infants, toddler and pre-schoolers operated by the YMCA of Central East Ontario and a child and family hub for young children, with early years programming, operated by the Peterborough Family Resource Centre.
It will also feature a high school-size gymnasium, a multi-purpose room, a learning commons and enhance music, science and technology spaces.
When it opens, LDPS will be the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board’s largest elementary school property, with a 19-acre site.
Also unique is that the school will be trilingual: English, French and Ojibway. The school’s French immersion program will start in senior kindergarten and students from Curve Lake First Nation tend to come to the school starting in Grade 4. The school’ s motto will be Maawndookaazag Together-Ensemble.
One thing the school won’t have: the Tigers mascot and gold/yellow colours that LDSS had for many years.
Students voted to have the Wolf as the LDPS mascot and the school colours will be blue and white.
St. Paul School in Lakefield also has a Wolf as its mascot, but the Catholic elementary school uses burgundy and grey for its colours.