New projections for student enrolment in Surrey concerns officials, as schools are already over-capacity. According to a report done by Surrey Schools, by 2033, enrolment is expected to reach 97,000 students.
Surrey Schools had a sharp spike in enrolment from last year to this year of nearly 2,500 new students, pushing the total to 75,069.
“The situation we are facing is we have far more students than classroom space,” said Terry Allen, a Surrey School board trustee. “We continue to add portables, one after another and it’s becoming bizarre that we can’t put neighbourhood children in neighbourhood schools.”
The school district is “moving 27 portables onto new sites and purchasing 27 new portables.”
The costs for the portables come directly out of the district’s operation costs, money that should be going directly into education, Allen said.
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Surrey’s mayor Brenda Locke and city council said more than 400 portables could be in use this September.
“The pressure to create more housing cannot be done in isolation. Core infrastructure such as schools must be built in lockstep with new housing,” said Mayor Brenda Locke in a Tuesday news release. “We need action and investment in building more schools in Surrey now.”
B.C.’s Minister of Education and Child Care Rachna Singh said it may be time to start thinking out of the box to try and address Surrey’s overcapacity issues.
“We’ve seen enormous growth in Surrey. It’s definitely putting pressure on the school district, but we are looking ahead with the projects that are already in the pipeline,” Singh told Global News. “We are also looking at some innovative ideas. We are talking about modulars, also urban schools, also how we can be proactive like acquiring more land in the areas that would become busier in the coming years.”
Singh has previously said, “We will continue to invest in Surrey schools as we make up for years of infrastructure deficits left by the old government. While the old government failed to open any new schools for multiple years, we are delivering over half a billion dollars in new funding that is creating 400 new classrooms for 10,000 kids, with more on the way.”
The Surrey district school board said $3.2 billion is needed to fund its five-year capital plan.
Meanwhile, the B.C. government has allocated $3.4 billion in the 2023 budget for all school projects across the province over the next three years.
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