As the B.C. government announces a flurry of new classrooms ahead of September, the head of a Surrey parents’ group says modular school additions aren’t a sustainable solution to overcrowding.
“The Ministry of Infrastructure has made a really big deal about the new spaces that are happening across Surrey and other districts,” said Anne Whitmore, president of the Surrey District Parents Advisory Committee (DPAC).
“While modulars are so much nicer, they have HVAC, they have windows, they often have built-in bathrooms and maybe some smaller office spaces, they don’t increase the actual capacity in school if they’re replacing portables.”
Provincial Infrastructure Minister Bowinn Ma was in Langley on Friday, where she announced over 900 new seats for the district and 3,000 more in the pipeline.
Ma has said the province is playing catchup against a surging population base, and that pre-fabricated, modular school additions allow the province to expand school capacity in half the time at half the cost.
On Tuesday she announced 700 new spaces in Surrey, the province’s most populous school district, and one so overcrowded it has turned to extended day schedules and hybrid learning for upper-grade students.
“(Modular additions are) one of the reasons why are are able to provide updates on so many classroom seats this week,” Ma said.
“Three thousand across the province are opening this fall, and in Surrey alone, an additional 4,700 actively under construction that we expect to open in a year or two. It is the fastest pace of new student spaces we have ever ben able to deliver.”
Those numbers, Whitmore argues, are deceptive.
She said the 700 spaces in Surrey come in the form of 40 classrooms. However, they also replace 19 portables.
“I think that it could be really helpful if the government just gave us real truth,” she said.
“It’s increasing capacity by 21 so let’s talk about 21 new classrooms. Let’s not say that they’re 40 new classrooms.”
Whitmore said she is also concerned about the long-term impact of relying on modular additions, which add more classrooms to a school without corresponding new facilities, including libraries, gyms and administration space.
Ma, however, defended the approach.
“You would be hard-pressed to find a student, a teacher, a parent who would say they would rather their child’s classroom be in a portable than in a fully-functional classroom addition,” she said.
“These are indistinguishable for the vast majority of people from regular construction.”
Whitmore stressed that parents’ groups aren’t trying to set themselves up as opponents of the government, but that they do feel like they aren’t getting the frank conversations they want.
She said she travelled to Victoria in the spring to lay out what parents want from the province: a clear line of authority on decision making in education, a clear plan to deal with overcrowding, and a move to cut public funding from private schools.
“We understand they can’t fix decades of underfunding in one year,” she said. “But let’s make a plan forward that addresses this.”