The Sooke Developing School District has a long-standing school site.
The 2.4 hectare assets on Latoria Road, near Klahanie Drive, will eventually house a number one school for up to 500 students. The province is making a $7.7 million investment in the field and the school district is contributing $960,000.
With 11,500 academics expected in 2020-21 and a few others 300 per year over the next 15 years, the Sooke district is the fastest developed in line with capital in British Columbia.
Sooke School Board Chairman Ravi Parmar said in an investment announcement Friday that the school “in a few years” will be surrounded by 400 homes as a component of a new development.
The new school, with a 500-seat elementary school and a 700-seat school on Constellation Avenue in Langford’s Westhills community, is a blessing to families who didn’t know if there would be room for their children in local schools. Parmar says.
Blasting and preparation are already underway on Constellation Avenue for Pexsisen Elementary School and Central Mountain Lellum High School, any of which will open in September 2022.
“I know it’s a challenge for families moving here to Happy Valley, knowing that they probably won’t be able to make it to Happy Valley [the school],” Parmar said. “Instead, you have to drive or travel on one of our school buses and move to Wishart Elementary School or David Cameron, two giant schools flooded with mobile phones.
“Managing this expansion can be difficult.”
In addition to the new schools, Parmar, a $30 million addition to Royal Bay Secondary will be unveiled in September.
Land was also acquired on McCallum Road, near Costco, for some other high school.
Cendra Beaton, chairwoman of the Sooke Parent Education Advisory Board, attended the investment announcement and called the acquisition of more land “good news” for district families.
His circle of relatives is among those who have felt the strain of the area’s problems, said Beaton, who has a daughter in school and a son in elementary school.
“In any case, we had to wait impatiently until closer to September to know if there would be an area at the school a few steps from our house,” he said. “The tension of the unknown is felt through SD62 in all systems and in many schools.
“And I hear the father after the father talk about this procedural matter.”
Beaton said the new school would begin to satisfy the desires of academics in a network with a growing progression of the family home circle. “Parents and members of the network have felt the pressures of the exponential expansion of the student population in the Sooke School District for many years.
Prime Minister John Horgan said construction is helping to create jobs to revive the province amid the COVID-19 pandemic.