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Nanaimo school district gets $1.31M from B.C. government for upgrades, supplies

Money comes from province’s school enhancement program and student learning grant
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Following a funding announcement from the B.C. government, Nanaimo District Secondary School will receive a new dust extractor system. (News Bulletin file)

Ecole Hammond Bay Elementary will receive ventilation upgrades that will warm the school, thanks to a Ministry of Education grant of $1.84 million to Nanaimo school district. On Thursday, the province announced the district will receive $631,000 through the ministry School Enhancement Program for Nanaimo District Secondary and Hammond Bay.

Hammond Bay will also receive $527,000 to upgrade heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems under the Carbon Neutral Capital Program.

Pete Sabo, school district director of planning and operations, said $199,000 of school enhancement program money will be combined with the carbon neutral capital money for the upgraded ventilation project at Hammond Bay.

The school district has been working with the Regional District of Nanaimo, as newly laid sewer outfall runs in a right-of-way next to the Hammond Bay property, Sabo said.

“They offered to work with us to put some connections into that pipe that runs by the school,” said Sabo. “We’re going to connect to that pipe and we’re going to pipe effluent through a heat exchanger and we’re going to provide the heat for the school. They’ve told us that that pipe runs between 15-21 degrees C all year round and so we’re going to extract all the heat we can to heat Hammond Bay.”

The remaining $432,000 of enhancement program money will go toward a dust extractor at Nanaimo District Secondary. According to Sabo, there was a change in regulations governing dust extraction and the district is doing a voluntary upgrade at the high school.

“We’re doing a targeted construction shop dust extraction system upgrade,” said Sabo. “We did a review of all of our dust extractor systems over the last year and we [selected] NDSS due to the age, the size of the school, the utilization of the shop as our highest priority.”

The ministry also announced that $685,163 will come to the district through the Student Learning Grant to purchase classroom equipment and school supplies.



Karl Yu

About the Author: Karl Yu

After interning at Vancouver Metro free daily newspaper, I joined Black Press in 2010.
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