High school receives $3.7M to build eight classrooms
Made for 1,100 students, St. Joseph's current enrolment is roughly 1,300
To address a growing student population, Windsor's St. Joseph's Catholic High School is getting $3.7 million from the provincial government to build eight additional classrooms.
Local MPP Andrew Dowie (PC — Windsor-tecumseh) visited the east Windsor school on Tuesday and joined members of the Windsor-essex Catholic District School Board to announce the provincial investment.
The funding is expected to create 184 new spaces for students at St. Joseph's Catholic High School by 2026.
The board's director of education, Emelda Byrne, described the additional spaces as “very welcome” considering the “accommodation pressures here at the school.”
St. Joseph's, built to replace the former high school of the same name, opened in 2006 and was originally built to accommodate 1,100 students. Total enrolment currently sits around 1,300 students.
Byrne said the issue of increasing enrolment is not exclusive to St. Joseph's Catholic High School; rather, it's a trend across the school board.
“We see that in Lakeshore, we see it here in East Riverside, with the whole expansion of the EV (electric vehicle battery) plant coming. We see it in South Windsor,” she said. “So in different pockets of the city and the county, we're seeing an expansion and growth in enrolment.”
Construction on a new residential subdivision is underway on adjacent lands next to St. Joseph's.
Dowie, representing the Ford government, said the planning process had taken so long that “the estimates on student population have not entirely been consistent with what the student population becomes.”
“So we need to have a better process that's faster, that's more nimble, that reflects the actual student population.”
The project is part of the Ministry of Education's capital priorities program, a $1.3-billion plan announced by Education Minister Stephen Lecce last December, that will support school construction, repairs and expansions in the coming academic year.
The investment will help create more than 27,000 student spaces and 1,700 licensed childcare spaces at schools across Ontario.
“I'm delighted to put in a great word for all of our local school boards and for the students for our community who need better facilities,” said Dowie. “We have legacy schools that may not meet the quality of education that we expect today.
“So I'm going to keep on pushing more and more, and as long as I'm there, to ensure that we have facilities that are high-quality learning environments that allow our students to have the best skills opportunities that they can obtain.”
Byrne said an architectural team and contractor will be selected next year, and anticipates groundbreaking on the northeast side of the building to begin by the summer of 2025.
She said the school board will use the current capital priority funding — which the high school applied for last October — but will also request additional support from the Ministry of Education if needed in the future.
Dowie said this funding announcement is the first in a series, with more to come. Tuesday's investment announcement is part of the province's broader pledge to allocate roughly $16 million toward schools in the coming decade.
“We have a lot more cheques to write as we receive the proposals and ultimately get the funds in place,” he said.
“I look forward to bringing as much of that home to the benefit of our students.”