With the new school year just over a week away, issues such as the future of Victoria High School and the need for more teachers are back on the radar.
Education Minister Rob Fleming spoke on a wide range of issues Friday with the Times Colonist, including the next steps for historic Vic High and its place in the community. The school dates back to 1876 and has been at its current site in Fernwood since 1914.
The Greater Victoria school board chose a preferred option for seismic work and other features at Vic High totalling $73.3 million, but the final decision will be made by the Ministry of Education. The plan would also see the school’s facade preserved.
“We’re waiting for the business case to come from the school district,” said Fleming, MLA for Victoria-Swan Lake.
“We’ll have to wait a few months to get the numbers,” he said, adding that the district is looking at the “challenges” of the project.
There has been widespread support for maintaining Vic High’s heritage aspects.
“It’s an old school,” Fleming said. “It’s a magnificent structure, but it’s one that has a real range of cost potentials.”
Looking more broadly at the year ahead, he touted the new curriculum making its way into B.C. high schools, a program that will mean more choices and new courses and will feature self-directed or personalized learning for students.
“I think this is a really exciting time,” Fleming said. “We’ve got the curriculum reform continuing, so Grade 10 will see the new curriculum introduced Sept. 1.” There have been changes to the Grade 11 and 12 curricula, but they are not mandatory until 2019.
He said the ministry is also working to ensure the province’s 60 school districts are able to hire the teachers they need following a 2016 Supreme Court of Canada decision that restored B.C. teachers’ 2002 contract language on class size and composition — leading to more and smaller classes.
Much of what had to be done was completed last year, Fleming said, but teachers are still in demand. “We’re [seeing] more teachers from out of province looking to come to British Columbia. We’ve got new, young teachers coming out of B.C. universities that have teaching licences that are finding multiple job offers in different parts of the province.
“So it’s a very healthy hiring environment that we haven’t really seen in 30 or 40 years in B.C.”
The ministry estimates the number of students in B.C. schools in 2018-19 will reach 538,821 — an increase of 1,737 over last year.
Fleming said the Sooke and Surrey districts will see much of that growth. “The growth is concentrated, there’s no question about it.”
The Sooke district’s growth has led the ministry to take a proactive approach to acquiring land for more schools, Fleming said.
“Those sites that we’ve acquired — and we’ve invested $55 million to build new spaces or purchase land just in 11 months — those sites will be available to support the construction of schools in the near future,” he said.
Sooke district officials expect to see about 520 new students this year, then 300 to 400 per year over the next decade.
That growth could see some previously closed schools used again, Fleming said.
“We’re getting some innovative proposals around schools that were shuttered under the previous government, they closed about 220 of them. Some of them are being reopened for school purposes, others are being converted to alternate education or adult education programs.”
Seismic work being done at the Burnside Elementary building will allow relocation of programs currently run out of the S.J. Willis Education Centre.
Fleming said work will continue around B.C. on construction of new playgrounds, the result of a $5-million annual fund created by the province. Quadra Elementary was one of the first schools to benefit, and playgrounds were also announced for Poirier Elementary and Saturna Island Elementary.
“Part of my mandate was to relieve parents of the burden of fundraising for playground equipment, which always seemed absurd to me and very inequitable,” Fleming said.
Playgrounds are a vital part of schools for younger children, he said. “What’s a school without play-based learning that happens over lunch and recess?”
