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Chilliwack MLAs announce long-awaited funding for overcrowded Promontory school

Province providing $4.8 million, school district $1.3 million for eight-room expansion at Promontory Heights Elementary
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Chilliwack-Hope MLA Laurie Throness was at Promontory Heights Elementary on Friday to announced $4.8 million in provincial money to go towards the $6.1 million eight-classroom expansion at the overcrowded school.


Promontory Heights Elementary has been bursting at the seams over capacity for years, and provincial representatives were in town Friday to announce an eight-classroom expansion for the school.

The Chilliwack School District has long planned for and requested an expansion for the school in the densely populated residential area.

At the beginning of this school year, Promontory was at 196 per cent capacity with a great many students in the eight portables on site.

Grade 4 student Aaliyah Vroege spoke at the announcement Friday morning attended by Chilliwack MLA John Martin, Chilliwack-Hope MLA Laurie Throness, a number of school district board members and senior staff, and Mayor Sharon Gaetz.

Vroege spoke about how going to school in a portable is hard for a number of reasons, particularly so this year because of the snow.

“This year I’m in the portable farthest away,” she said.

Throness made the formal announcement that the province is providing $4.8 million towards the project with a completion date of spring 2018.

The school district is providing the remaining $1.3 million.

The two-storey addition will be built on the west side of the school creating 200 new student spaces.

The expansion will move the students in the existing portables into new classrooms, and it will include a new multi-purpose area and “collaborative learning spaces to support B.C.’s new curriculum,” according to a government press release.

“It’s a thrill to be here on behalf of the Minister of Education Mike Bernier,” Throness told those in attendance, after a choir sang to the group. “We are committed to supporting B.C.’s rapidly growing communities. . . . With this growth comes a critical need for student spaces.”

He added the problem of overcrowding in Chilliwack is a “much better problem” than in elsewhere in his riding such as Yale and Hope where the problem is a lack of children and schools have recently been closed.

"Promontory Heights Elementary has seen a tremendous amount of growth over a short period of time,” Martin said in the release. “This investment will provide much-needed room for students and ensure that important community programs continue to be available to local families, children and the community."

School board chair Paul McManus thanked the ministry for the much-needed investment.

“This addition will provide an improved learning environment for students,” he said. “We are also looking forward to Promontory having greater capacity and more adequate instructional spaces for students and staff.”

The impetus for the expansion money came after Bernier came to Chilliwack in June of last year. At that time, then board chair Silvia Dyck made it clear the desperate situation of overcrowding at schools in Sardis.

“We desperately need a new school on the south side,” Dyck said at the time. “We are absolutely due for one.”

(As of Sept. 30, 2016, all elementary schools on the south side were over capacity. At 196 per cent of capacity, Promontory was the worst but the average of the seven elementary schools was 137 per cent. Middle-secondary schools on the south side were at 107 per cent. On the north side, elementary schools were at 97 per cent capacity and middle-secondary were at 91 per cent. The three rural schools, Cultus Lake, Gerendale and Yarrow, were at an average of 92 per cent.)

Since then Throness said he and Martin “agitated” for the funding in Victoria.

On social media, some criticized the announcement’s timing as another example of BC Liberal government funding coming just weeks away from a provincial election.

Others called it a bandaid solution; not enough to deal with chronic over-capacity.

paul.henderson@theprogress.com

@PeeJayAitch