In Saint-Lin-Laurentides, north of Montreal, work has already begun on what authorities are calling a state-of-the art institution.
It is an English elementary school for the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board, a welcome change after anglophones in Montreal have witnessed numerous English schools closing in recent years, due to low enrolment.
“The school itself will hold 384 students and in Saint-Lin we have about a hundred students waiting to join us in this new school,” explained Paolo Galati, Sir Wilfrid Laurier board chair, during an event to mark the start of construction.
New English schools in this province are rare.
“I did a school opening in Drummondville a couple of months just before the election (in 2022),” Christopher Skeete, Quebec economy minister and former Wilfrid Laurier student pointed out.
This new one in Saint-Lin is the first to be built by this school board in more than a decade, according to officials.
It won’t serve just families in this municipality.
The board covers 35,000 square kilometres, an area larger than Belgium, including the regions of Laval, Lanaudière, and the Laurentides, with 26 elementary schools and nine high schools. There are four schools that are already overcrowded, according to Galati.
“Some schools are at a capacity of 168 per cent, some are at 138 per cent,” he pointed out.
On top of that, he added, students travel more than an hour each way to get to a school that has space.
The new $27-million school with 16 classrooms, a double gymnasium and a playground will not only help ease some of that pressure, but will benefit the broader community as well, mayor Mathieu Maisonneuve noted.
“These investments will enable us to build more city services around that school,” he pointed out.
He stressed that the new school is needed to accommodate growing communities in the area, with anglophones moving into the region in recent years.
“So the population of Saint-Lin-Laurentides has doubled over the last 15 years,” the mayor told Global News.
He expects that population to boom to continue.
The new school is scheduled to open in fall 2024.