After a rocky start to the school year, School District 43 got some good news this week with the announcement of $22.5 million to rebuild Sir Frederick Banting middle school in Coquitlam.
At a special assembly at the school Thursday, board of education trustees and school officials gave the Grade 6 to 8 students the news and received an appreciative round of applause.
"This will be a community hub for generations to come," promised Melissa Hyndes, the current board chair who is also running for school trustee in Port Moody.
The provincial funding means the 51-year-old building will be demolished and replaced with a new structure containing 19 general instruction classrooms plus three specialized classrooms for music, healthy living and a technical education shop, as well as a gym, combined library and computer lab and a Neighbourhood Learning Centre.
Superintendent Tom Grant said the school is being rebuilt because it's cheaper than doing a seismic overhaul and said the announcement will kick-start a planning process that will see the new school planned, built and opened by September, 2017.
FIRST BIG REBUILD FOR BURQUITLAM
A facilities planning spokesperson said this is the first big rebuild for a middle school in northwest Coquitlam and Devon Ross, the acting principal of facilities initiatives, said the growth of Burquitlam is bringing more families into the area., The new school is being built for 550 students while 509 students are currently enrolled at the school that offers French Immersion as well as skills explorations for credit towards graduation.
One of the issues during construction will be traffic flow and parking in the neighborhood that has struggled with these issues in the past, and Ross said part of the planning process will be to consult with residents on parking strategies for a report to the city of Coquitlam.
"It's a nice piece of property. It should be a fairly straight-forward build," said board chair Hyndes, in discussing the process that will see the new school opened in just three years.
It took more than arm-twisting to get the province to agree to the rebuild, with the district having provide a business case that building new was preferred over a renovation.
"We've been working extremely hard with the government to put forward a case for them to realize that a rebuild is better than an upgrade," Hyndes noted.
One trustee was particularly excited about the announcement. Holly Butterfield, a school board rep for Anmore/Belcarra who is also running again, attended Banting when it was a junior high school in the early 1970s. She said it's about time a new school was built to reflect changing education methods, and a growing community.
"The whole area is being revitalized and SkyTrain is coming. It's good for the community," she said "and families are coming back."
The project is part of a series of new builds and retrofits that have taken place in recent years. A similar process was followed for Pitt River middle school in Port Coquitlam, which was rebuilt with seismic funding and opened in January. Centennial is currently under construction with seismic funding and Eagle Mountain, a new school in Anmore, just opened in September.
