The doors to the Sooke School District’s newest school will open today on Langford’s Constellation Avenue.
Karen DeCicco, the inaugural principal at PEXSISEN Elementary School, gave a tour of the school on Friday as workers made finishing touches at the site. The school, whose name means “the opening of hands” in the Songhees language (it’s pronounced pux-see-sung), can accommodate 600 students.
DeCicco said she talked to Songhees elder Butch Dick about what the name of the school means to him.
“He said to me to that the way he thinks about our school is not as a school but as a house and a home, and a house of learning.”
Next door, Centre Mountain Lellum Middle School was supposed to open at the same time, but supply-chain problems — especially with windows and fire-suppression equipment — and other factors have delayed completion until Nov. 10. In the meantime, students will be accommodated at PEXSISEN, and at Dunsmuir and Spencer middle schools.
The two new schools, which are located side-by-side, cost a combined $88.6 million.
Classrooms at PEXSISEN feature a considerable amount of glass to let in natural light, and energy comes from geothermal power generated by loops buried beneath the school field that gather heat. There are also solar panels.
“The school will be really reflective of the land around it, so they’ve really taken into account the colours and the rock formations,” DeCicco said.
Classrooms for different grades will be located together, a unique design in the Sooke School District.
Child-care programs run by Beacon Community Services are within the school.
Adorning the entrance area will be a piece of art created by Songhees artists, while plenty of nooks and communal spaces for students are sprinkled throughout the building, DeCicco said.
Garden spots on the grounds will give “the opportunity for our wee ones to get muddy and get in there and learn about the earth and the space that’s around them,” she said.
Gardening classes will be held in an outdoor covered area complete with picnic tables and a portable white board, while a large garden will be filled with Indigenous plants.
Even as PEXSISEN is set to open its doors, the fast-growing district is looking ahead to opening South Langford Elementary in 2025, said Sooke School Board chairman Ravi Parmar.
An additional two more elementary schools in the Bear Mountain and Royal Bay areas are also in the district’s capital plan.
Meanwhile, Royal Bay Secondary, which has already expanded once since it opened in 2015, might see the return of portable classrooms next year.
“Opening new schools like PEXSISEN and soon Central Mountain Lellum is obviously really good news for our community, but it’s not enough,” Parmar said.
“We’re really excited to be in a growing school district. We just need some more schools.”
Pexsisen could be at capacity within a few years, he said.
About 600 new students are expected in the district of just over 12,000 students in September following a record influx last year of about 800, Parmar said.
The number of new students each year is typically around 300 to 400. “It’s been certainly challenging for us to keep up and we’re hopeful the government will continue to provide us dollars,” Parmar said.
The student growth is being fuelled by a lot of young families moving into the area, he said.
Parmar said families are moving from Surrey, Vancouver and other areas where they can’t necessarily afford a house.
“We’ve got people moving from all over the world. Langford was known for a very long time as a blue-collar community, but we have a lot of families in tech and innovation that are moving and wanting to call this region home.”
