New secondary school not needed, despite social media comments
Although the nominal capacity of North Peace Secondary School has been reached, the school is not overcrowded and the likelihood of getting a new secondary school built in School District 60 is slim to none, according to Superintendent of Schools, Stephen Petrucci.
This information came to light during discussion at the December 18 School Board meeting, when board chair Helen Gilbert reported on her activities since the last board meeting.
Gilbert said that she’d done two radio interviews recently about the Strategic Plan update and renewal, and one of them she “got hit with the question about perceived need for a new high school, so I was able to reference the capital plan, the fact that enrollment at the high school has been higher and that we were looking at stats as part of tonight’s board meeting.”
When the current building opened in 1989, there were 749 students. The addition, containing 10 more classrooms with a capacity of 280 students was added in 2001, following several years of running a flex system – in which there were five class blocks per day and no universal lunch hour, as opposed to the present system with four blocks per day – and a student population of 924 in September 2000. In 2010, NPSS was full, with 1220 students. The Energetic Learning Campus opened in September 2011, which took the pressure off the main campus, by housing 151 students, helping to bring the main campus population down to 1,008.
Currently, enrollment at NPSS is 1,078 students, well below the levels seen in 2010, but slightly over the 1,035 nominal capacity of the building, according to stats provided by Petrucci.
“Since September 2000 we’re up 150 students, but again we added capacity for 300 students at that time,” Petrucci said. “In the last five years, we’ve gone up a total of 31 students.”
Of course, Petrucci said they would never turn down more space, and the school could use more Foods classes as that is a very popular elective, but that’s not reason enough to build a new high school.
Each of the classrooms are designed to hold 28 students, but some electives, such as hairdressing for example, only have 16. There are also classrooms which are being used for tutorial, rather than regular classes.
“These are school-based decisions around the availability of space,” said Petrucci. “When the Ministry comes in and says how many classrooms do you have, they don’t care that five are being used for tutorials or different things.”
“That would mean the school would have to start only running electives that 28 kids are in, so then the 16 that are in hairdressing, [would be told] sorry that’s too few kids for this classroom,” said Trustee Nicole Gillis. “That’s not where I want to go.”
“The Ministry has been very clear that they’re not approving senior secondary schools,” said Gilbert. “We would be expected to come up with some other strategies.”
Those other strategies could include adding portables and moving back to a flex system. Right now, there are no portables at NPSS.
Gilbert said that NPSS would have to be well over its nominal capacity for years before the Ministry would even consider building a new school or adding onto the existing building again.
“Some elementary schools, before Ma Murray and Anne Roberts went in, were at 150 per cent,” she said.
Even after exhausting other strategies, a new school wouldn’t be built, said Trustee Ida Campbell, because the current building is designed to be added onto one more time.
“It took us quite awhile to get that addition on there, and we were already on the flex system. Our numbers at that time were supposed to increase even more than they did,” Campbell said.
“The building would have to show over capacity for ten years before they’d look at an addition,” Petrucci said.
In theory, two portables would solve the problem, Trustee Bill Snow observed.
“The reality is, people seem to not like portables, but they give us quite a few options down the road, if and when we get some increase in enrollment,” Petrucci said.
It boils down to finding the reason behind the rhetoric, said Gilbert. “If it’s deemed that North Peace needs a new building because kids can’t get the courses they want, that’s a different conversation than it being the actual capacity of the building.”
“Anytime you put a thousand kids together in a busy place, no matter how many rooms you have, it’s going to look overcrowded,” said Petrucci.
“From a staff perspective, the board should not change the capital plan based on some of the comments out there,” he said.
“No, we as a board can’t start changing our plans because of social media posts,” Gillis added.