A town in Quebec’s Beauce region will be getting a new elementary school after a student’s song about its sorry state drew the attention of Premier François Legault.
Legault said Monday the 84-year-old l’Accueil school in Scott, Que., which was damaged by recent floods, will be enlarged and moved to a new location outside the flood zone.
Speaking in the municipality south of Quebec City, Legault said he was touched by a song written by a sixth-grade student named James Paquet, who highlighted the plight of his school in a widely shared video.
READ MORE: Quebec’s disastrous 2019 floods bring out compassion from local volunteers
In a song shared on Facebook by the boy’s mother, James strums a guitar and asks the premier for a new school because his has been damaged by repeated floods.
“Every year it’s flooded,” the student sings as images onscreen show a flooded school yard, bare walls and mucky classrooms filled with debris. “It’s too bad because I don’t have a school any more.”
On Monday, Paquet said his own classroom was not flooded, unlike many other classrooms.
“The first grade and the second grade and the music class and the English class had a lot of damage,” he said.
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Legault agreed the old school is in bad shape and promised to speed up the building process so the new location can be ready in less than two years.
“I was very happy to see somebody like James pushing something, not only for himself but for all his colleagues,” Legault said.
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It’s not the first time the school has flooded. Nearly $40,000 was spent to repair it in 2014.
In 2019, the cost of emergency work — such as stripping walls, disinfecting classrooms and replacing damaged equipment — is estimated at $250,000.
“Living through that each year brings stress,” Legault said. “We can’t say that education is a priority, and then put our children in conditions like these.”
Paquet is proud that future students will benefit — even though he is going to high school next year.
“Well, I think they’re going to be happier, and they will learn more I think. The school will be, like more shiny and more cool,” he said.
WATCH: Coverage of the 2019 Quebec floods on Globalnews.ca
He said the new school, with an estimated construction cost of $18 million, will have 10 additional classrooms to meet the needs of the region’s growing population.
He also responded to James in a video message on social media, in which he thanked the student and assured him his request would be granted. He also said this is the first of more announcements to come. The government estimates 50 percent of all Quebec schools are in need of major renovations or complete reconstruction.
“I won’t wait for songs in every schools that are in bad shape to do something,” Legault said.
— With files from Global News’ Raquel Fletcher