Enrolment pressure at Wellington Secondary School is expected to be lessened with a six-classroom extension that will accommodate 150 students.
The high school, built for 900 students, had 1,066 enrolled based on September 2023 numbers, noted a staff report. Numbers for 2024-25 have not been finalized, but at Nanaimo Ladysmith Public Schools' board meeting Wednesday, Aug. 28, trustees approved a capital bylaw amendment after the B.C. Ministry of Education and Child Care green-lit the addition in July.
The classroom facility, anticipated to be ready by winter 2026, will be pre-fabricated and modular. At the meeting, Mark Walsh, SD68 secretary-treasurer, said the district faces enrolment pressures at the secondary school level, including at Nanaimo District and in particular, Wellington.
"The [B.C. government] has focused on trying to do very quick builds…" Walsh said. "They've given us – and districts around the province that have been able to deliver – modular, pre-made units that are full classrooms, they're not a portable. We would lay a slab, we would do the civil work immediately while all the other stuff is getting built somewhere else and then it gets delivered and in a relatively timely fashion.”
At a press conference Friday, Aug. 30, at the school site, Sheila Malcolmson, Nanaimo MLA, said a budget of $9 million has been allocated. Planning is underway, Walsh stated at the event, and staff are examining where best to build the facility, with four possible sites.
While the expansion announcement is not a "silver bullet" that will rectify the district's capacity issues, it will still benefit the district, the secretary-treasurer said.
"Right now, essentially all of our secondary schools, with the exception of Ladysmith and Cedar, are above capacity and so we're going to be able to use all these spaces immediately,” he said.
At the meeting, Walsh said the money from the ministry is appreciated.
"By adding general instruction space, we're not necessarily adding to science labs, foods, things like that and so our team is actively looking at when the units are complete … requesting funds to maybe do a renovation within Wellington itself to add some of that specialty space," he said. "We don't want to just stuff kids in a school because we've got additional classroom space, it needs to be meaningful."
Walsh said the amendment was needed so that the district can receive the money from the government and staff would return to the board with designs. The motion passed unanimously.
Greg Keller, school board chairperson, said in a press release that the district is grateful for the province's support.
"These new classrooms directly support our district goal of increasing the number of students who feel welcome, safe and have a sense of belonging in their school, in an environmentally sustainable way, he said.
Other such facilities have been built in the province, including Surrey, Sooke and Haida Gwaii, according to Malcolmson.
"A really important lesson that we've learned as a provincial government is, with extraordinary population growth, we need to be able to build quickly, and the prefabs allow us to build twice as fast … they accommodate our heating and cooling requirements with a climate change lens,” she said. "They can be designed to be two-storey, to have bathrooms, hallways, lockers. It really is a kind of a mini school."
