Portable classrooms on the rise in Surrey schools
Increased enrolment impacts NDP promise to eliminate spaces within four years
VICTORIA — The number of portable classrooms at Surrey schools will increase this year, despite a popular election promise by the NDP government to eliminate them by building new schools.
Continued rising enrolment is pushing the Surrey school district to add 14 new portables, even as a new high school and two new elementary schools open next month.
That means more than 7,500 students will find themselves taught in 333 portables across Surrey in the school year that begins in two weeks.
The growth is a blow to the B.C. NDP, that promised in the 2017 provincial election to eliminate portables in Surrey within four years. That pledge helped earn the party the votes it needed to win three new seats in Surrey. But the number of portables has increased for two consecutive years.
Surrey Schools chair Laurie Larsen said the government was clearly trying to fast-track school construction with a new capital progress office and has been working well with the district by remaining in regular communication with local officials. But eliminating portables simply may never happen, she said.
“I don’t think they recognize the length of time it takes to acquire land and to build,” Larsen said. “As a trustee, it doesn’t look like it’s an achievable goal there will be no portables. We always need them.”
Cindy Dalglish, a school trustee candidate with Surrey Students NOW who endorsed the NDP’s election portable plan, said she wanted to see completion prioritized for nine school projects which are expected to be occupied between September 2019 and September 2020.
“I want to know what the hold up is. Where’s the collaboration between the city and the district on construction?” Dalglish said. “We have 7,000 seats, right now, sitting there waiting to be built. That would make a huge dent in the issues we’re having.”
Dalglish said her daughter, who is going into Grade 5, was taught in portables last year and came home shivering on cold days, and in tears some days when she sat through sweltering heat.
“That’s not a good learning environment,” she said.
Eight of the new portables will be used for adult education, and the others will be deployed for children at schools where needed this fall, according to the district.
Portables will decrease at Lord Tweedsmuir and Clayton Heights secondary schools because the new Ecole Salish Secondary School is opening in September. However, there remains 14 portables at Sullivan Heights Secondary.
Surrey will see 850 new students enrolled this year, on a base of around 73,000 students. It is the largest school district in the province.
Larsen said the 2016 victory by teachers in the Supreme Court of Canada, which restored class size and composition language, has also hindered progress on reducing portables. The ruling has resulted in the hiring of thousands of new teachers across the province and added to the pressure for more classroom spaces and schools.
“I think they could have been a lot closer if it wasn’t for the Supreme Court ruling,” she said.
The Surrey district estimated last year it would cost more than $517 million over five years just to keep up with a capacity squeeze of growing enrolment by building or expanding 22 schools, let alone drive down portables.