Portable classroom pressure easing
Sooke district adds five ahead of next school year, compared with 22 in 2017, Victoria puts up a few more while Saanich plans none
Plans for adding portable classrooms to local school districts are nothing like the influx that hit the region in 2017.
In the Sooke district, five portables are planned in preparation for the 2018-19 school year versus 22 last summer.
A 2016 Supreme Court of Canada judgment restoring 2002 contract language for unionized B.C. teachers has been a major factor in districts’ use of portables, since it created a need for more and smaller classes.
Sooke’s 2017 portables were no exception.
“A couple had to do with growth and the rest had to do with the Supreme Court decision being rendered,” said Sooke school board chairman Ravi Parmar.
This year, all five portables being installed are the result of growth in student numbers, he said.
Two portables will go in at Belmont Secondary — which is only three years old — and one at each of Wishart Elementary, David Cameron Elementary and Journey Middle School.
Sooke is among the fastest-growing school districts in B.C.
“The next 10 years we’re going to be one or two, for sure,” Parmar said. “We’re projecting 520 students next year, and then 300 to 400 over the next decade, per year.”
In hope of stemming the growing need for portables throughout B.C., Education Minister Rob Fleming brought officials from Sooke and other fast-growing districts together last September to look at ways to speed up construction of new schools. Parmar said the meeting had the desired effect.
He said the minister is looking to cut the overall process for getting a school built from seven years to 3 1⁄2 .
New school projects in the works in the Sooke district include an elementary school for about 400 students and a middle school for about 700. They will share a site in the Westhills area.
In the Greater Victoria district, where 13 portables were added at eight schools last summer, three were built in-house and have been well-received.
Two more of the structures, dubbed “learning studios,” are set to go in at Oaklands and Quadra elementaries, and a refurbished conventional portable has gone to Tillicum Elementary.
In all, 10 to 12 new classrooms — including the learning studios — are being added. That includes creating four more classrooms at George Jay Elementary through internal realignment at the school.
The Saanich school district brought in four portables last summer but will not be adding any this summer, said secretarytreasurer Jason Reid.
“We’re renovating a few existing spaces within schools into classrooms.”
Along with that, a four-classroom addition at Keating Elementary was approved in January.