Minister says plan to eliminate Surrey portables realistic

Four-year target means building faster, spending more and cutting red tape

B.C.’s NDP government is still clinging to an election promise that it can eliminate portables in Surrey within four years, but admits it will involve fast-tracking approvals, changing certain funding requirements, and allowing for overbuilding of schools.

Education Minister Rob Fleming said it remains possible for the NDP to honour the four-year portable plan, which was a highprofile campaign promise that helped the party win three Surrey ridings from the Liberals in the spring election.

“I believe that we can substantially complete that timeline,” Fleming said during a debate of his ministry’s budget at the legislature. “We’re going to have to have a lot of things go right for us. We’re going to have to acquire a lot more additional sites, and we’re going to have to get additional money out the door.”

There are currently 325 portables in Surrey, serving approximately 7,000 students. The city is struggling with a rapidly growing population that adds 1,000 students annually and is significantly overcrowding its schools.

Fleming told reporters Monday he is willing to consider changing the rules for approving school funding in 10 high-growth school districts, such as Surrey, where enrolment is outpacing the rest of the province. That includes altering current government rules about building new schools, and allowing some overbuilding of additional space in new facilities in proven high-growth areas, he said.

“We’ve got to get building more schools,” he said. “Portables are the symptom of overcrowding, and the way to (fix) that is to get schools approved and constructed faster.”

But the NDP promise to eliminate school portables in Surrey will be expensive. The district has a five-year capital plan to expand or build 22 new schools at a cost of more than $517 million, just to address a current capacity squeeze that gets worse every year. The government plans to spend $1.7 billion over three years across the entire province for school upgrades and construction, and hasn’t said how much it will give Surrey.

Fleming said a recent “summit” between the Ministry of Education, City of Surrey and Surrey school district identified several ways to speed up school construction.

The province is looking at lowering a 50 per cent contribution rule from the previous Liberal government that would have made local districts pick up half the tab of building new schools, said Fleming. Previously, the province alone paid for most new school construction.

“What we’re saying is arbitrary formulas, arbitrary rules that have held up school construction, that’s not our agenda,” said Fleming.

The City of Surrey has told the government it will fast-track any school project through the permitting and zoning process. It has previously taken as long as eight to 12 months to get city approvals for new schools.

“I simply assured the minister that if there is a school construction that can go forward that it will go to the top of the list of projects for the city,” said Mayor Linda Hepner. “I’m certainly committed to doing it as quickly as we can, and to pull out all of the stops.”

If a school building project just needs permits on a school site, “we could do that in a matter of weeks,” said Hepner. “If it requires a rezoning of an entire site, it would be a matter of months, probably three.”

Accelerating school permitting could help reduce the current two years it takes to build an elementary school in Surrey and four years required to construct a secondary school.

Surrey school board chairman Shawn Wilson said he believes the NDP’s promise to eliminate portables in four years is achievable as long as the government commits the cash up-front to allow it to plan, acquire land and start building.

“I see it as do-able, but it will cost money,” said Wilson. “We need to know when we start out of the gate that the money will be there.”

“We can prove we need the schools, and identify the planning and forecasting . ... We’ve got the resources in place and they just have to trust us. We have the expertise and experience that with money we’d be able to help them get to that goal.

“I think it’s achievable. It’s aggressive. And if we didn’t get there, we’d put a huge dent in it.”

Wilson said he is encouraged by what he has heard from Fleming on changes to funding and capacity of school projects. He said Fleming needs to eliminate the Liberal requirement for up to 50 per cent local funding of new schools, brought in prior to the election. “This is really what started to exacerbate the problem in Surrey,” he said.

Allowing schools to build with excess capacity, rather than to current enrolment levels, could also help prevent new facilities being overcrowded and requiring portables from the day they open, said Wilson.