Forget Surrey: Chilliwack’s portable problem is even worse, and it’s not improving

For years, Surrey has been the focus of the Lower Mainland’s portable problem, as its school system has dealt with exponential growth.

Now Chilliwack is telling Surrey: hold my juice.

Just about every school in the city has portables, and is facing the need for even more as they fill up fast.

“As a school district, we’ve exceeded our functional capacity,” the Chilliwack School District’s acting superintendent Rohan Arul-Pragasam said.

“In almost most of our schools on both the north side and the south side, the capacity has exceeded a hundred per cent.”

Since 2015, Arul-Pragasam said his district has been growing at a rate of about 2.5 per cent every year. That amounts to 300 new students this year alone.

WATCH: (Sept. 3) Surrey parents upset over growing number of portables

2:15 Surrey parents upset over growing number of portables

One school, Vedder Middle, will need another two portables to handle the new arrivals. It already has 10.

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The district said there were about seven portables for every thousand students in Chilliwack last September. Compare that to Surrey, where that ratio was at five portables.

The Ministry of Education has approved two new capital projects, but one of them is already at capacity at the start of this school year.

“Oh, we won’t get away from portables,” the local school board’s chair Dan Coulter said. “We won’t.

“We’d need to build several schools quite quickly just to get rid of them and as long as we grow, I think we’ll be under this pressure,” he added.

Chilliwack is undergoing a growth spurt: the population is expected to surpass 100,000 by 2021.

The problem for building new schools is that Chiliwack is surrounded by agricultural land, so the district’s options for growth are limited.

Plans are being developed to create an arts school inside a building that used to belong to the University of the Fraser Valley.

Education Minister Rob Fleming said their province-wide three-year capital plan will eventually pay off, but it’s going to take time.

“It’s the largest school construction campaign we’ve had in British Columbia in decades,” Fleming said.

“In the meantime, we do have to acknowledge some of the frustrations and ask for patience from students staff and parents.”