New Nepean Catholic school has 4 portables for first day
‘Big jump in enrolment’ at St. Cecilia means 108 more pupils than thought
A new elementary school set to open next month in fastgrowing south Nepean already has a row of four portable classrooms.
Enrolment was much greater than expected at St. Cecilia School, say staff with the Ottawa Catholic School Board, and it’s the first time that the board has installed portables at a new school.
“People want to come to our school, and we did get a big jump in enrolment beyond our projections in early May through to the end of June and over the summer,” said Fred Chrystal, the board’s superintendent of planning and facilities.
Portable classrooms are typically added as the number of students grows after a school is built, and often can signal the need for an expansion or for a new school.
There’s capacity for 507 students in the colourful main building of St. Cecilia School, on Cambrian Road east of Greenbank Road. While officials projected in March that there would be 416 students this fall — a number that probably wouldn’t require the use of portables — the student population now sits at 524, Chrystal said.
Take student-teacher ratio rules into account and a handful of portables is necessary, he said.
Their immediate use shouldn’t overshadow the features of the $10.5-million school, said Chrystal, billing it as the first in Ottawa “designed specifically around the concept of 21st-century education,” with “high technology implementation and use,” and one that’s “designed for collaborative teaching, collaborative learning.”
Classrooms are clustered together, with shared spaces outside them called “learning pods” where students can work independently or in a group, he said.
There’s a “learning commons” instead of a traditional library, where students and teachers can interact and work together in a “reallife” type of environment. QR bar codes that can be read by a smartphone are used throughout the school and in garden space outside.
They provide information about architectural features or plants.
Grade 5 and 6 students to be housed in the portables will still be able to use the special spaces in the building, Chrystal said.
The school states on its website that the portables “will be equipped and furnished the same as each classroom in the school.”
Parents say they prefer their children to be in a main school building, Chrystal said, but “what we hear from students and parents who are in portables is that they’re very happy with where their children are, because what’s important at the end of the day is the relationship between the teacher and the students and the relationship among the students to each other and the quality of learning that goes on.”
Schools are built with eventual portable use in mind, because the provincial Ministry of Education needs evidence that a new building is necessary before funding is provided for one, said Chrystal.
The site plan for St. Cecilia suggests there is space for eight portable classrooms or a “future eightclassroom complex.” The board has also designated two additional future elementary schools and one secondary school for the growing area, according to a staff report from early last year.
The board wants to avoid building “monster” elementary schools, “where kids have no connection to the facility and to the staff or to each other,” Chrystal said.
Student ratios associated with full-day kindergarten also play a role in the use of portables at the new school, said Chrystal. Although St. Cecilia isn’t scheduled to receive ministry funding for full-day kindergarten until next year, the board plans to launch the program right away and cover the costs on its own.
Because the board is handling the program this year, those classes must have a lower ratio of students to teachers than they’ll need when the ministry’s funding kicks in, he said, and so “we have two rooms at the school for full-day kindergarten more than we would need” once the higher ratio takes effect through the ministry’s delivery of the program.
“That’s a one-year thing, and that will resolve itself next year, but we will continue to have growth in that area,” Chrystal said.
“We’re the only school in that particular area and, again obviously, that’s an attraction to parents. As other school boards come along and build schools in this community or (in) proximity to the community, obviously, some parents will choose to send their kids to those schools as well, and we may not continue to experience the same high level of growth as we did this year,” he added.
The new school has relieved a crunch at nearby St. Emily Catholic School, on Chapman Mills Drive west of Woodroffe Avenue, where enrolment has fallen from about 800 students last year to 547 this year, and the number of portables has gone from 11 to three, according to Chrystal.
Funding for St. Cecilia was approved by the ministry in June 2011, according to a staff-written document from January 2012, which at the time projected enrolment at 304 students in 2013, reaching 504 by 2018 and 773 by 2023.
Chrystal called greater-than-expected enrolment at St. Cecilia “a tribute to the success that we have as a school board and the programs that we’re offering, and the desire of parents to attend our schools.
“I don’t want the focus of that school to be around the four portables, which from our perspective is good news when we have the piece de resistance in Ottawa and a leading educational facility for our students in that particular building,” he said.