Classroom crunch hits Surrey
Schools squeezed for space while Vancouver, Richmond face closures
Metro Vancouver’s school districts are wrestling with enrolment issues.
In neighbourhoods where new, dense, family-friendly developments are being built, schools are bursting, while in more mature, stable neighbourhoods, schools are emptying out.
In Vancouver and Richmond, the population shift means as many as 25 schools could be closed, while in places like Surrey and Coquitlam, demand is unrelenting as young families move out to the suburbs and more affordable, smaller homes.
In certain Surrey neighbourhoods — where there has been significant new development — elementary schools are overflowing. One of those areas, South Newton, includes six elementary schools that feed into Sullivan Heights secondary school. Projections by the Surrey school district show by 2021, the group of schools in the neighbourhood near 64th Avenue between 136th and 152nd streets will be short 1,431 spaces.
One of those elementary schools, Woodward Hill, has both French Immersion and English students. Today, it’s two-thirds French and one-third English, a ratio that district staff would like to reverse over the next eight or nine years to make room for students living close to the school.
Cindy Dalglish, a parent of a student at Woodward Hill, has been spearheading an effort to stop the changes, saying that reducing the number of French Immersion spaces at Woodward Hill won’t help the overall space shortage in Surrey.
“It is so very clear the Surrey school district is under an immense amount of pressure to come up with seats for students out of thin air,” Dalglish said. “The development practices of the City of Surrey and the lack of collaboration that takes place between the city, the province, and the district all play a role in where we are at today, which is that we are far over capacity and don’t have enough school seats for all of the students currently and in the future.”
The three neighbourhoods with elementary schools at or beyond capacity — South Newton, Clayton and Grandview Heights — are home to many new townhouse complexes, which have significantly higher density than neighbourhoods with mostly single-family homes. Changing the number of spaces in French is just one strategy used by the district to manage space at the schools — they’ve also changed school boundaries several times and have opened three new elementary schools in the neighbourhood in the past 10 years.
Another new elementary school for the area will be added to the district’s capital plan this year, said Doug Strachan, Surrey school district spokesman. A six-classroom addition is also slated for Woodward Hill elementary and expanding the high school is also a priority, he said.
Surrey’s goal is to continue to accommodate the demand for French Immersion and there is no plan to reduce it overall, Strachan said. There is a new French Immersion program opening this fall at Cougar Creek elementary, so there won’t be a net loss of French spaces in the district, he said.
Dalglish encouraged people to speak out about the issue, either by writing to school trustees or speaking out on Placespeak, a tool used by the Surrey School District to get feedback.