The first day of school came a little late for the 518 students at Centre Mountain Lellum Middle School.
When classes around the province began in early September, the new school on Langford’s Constellation Avenue was still being finished due to worker shortages and supply-chain issues, including a shortage of windows and fire-suppression equipment.
For the first two and a half months of the school year, Grade 6 students from Centre Mountain Lellum attended school in nine portables at Spencer Middle School, with Grade 7s in six rooms next door at PEXSISEN Elementary — whose name is pronounced pux-see-sung — and Grade 8s in six portables at Dunsmuir Middle School.
But the $65.1-million school, which has capacity for 700 students, finally welcomed its first Grade 6-8 students on Monday. The school’s name, which comes from Chief Russ Chipps of the Beecher Bay Nation, means “house and the idea of community, where we raise our children.”
“Watching the students come into the building was overwhelming, in a good way,” principal Darren Russell said Monday, as he cut hundreds of pieces of cake for the opening celebration.
Grade 6 student Rianna Morgan, 11, was particularly impressed by the school’s big bay windows and artificial turf field. “Most middle schools don’t have a turf field.”
Parent advisory council president Lindsay Case, whose son Carter is in Grade 7 at the school, said she’s looking forward to getting a first-hand look at the school at the first PAC meeting this month. “It looks so beautiful,” said Case, adding it’s been interesting to see the “moving parts” that go into opening a school.
Case said the PAC has already done some fundraisers.
Members of the media were invited to tour the new facility Monday after classes were over. Russell said the school features an abundance of natural light, especially in the library, which he called one of the nicest such spaces in the province.
“In this school, you can look through from one end to the other. The natural light is amazing.”
Russell said he is also a fan of the many gathering spaces for students outside the school, a lot of them under cover for use in all types of weather. “Every stairwell has a little undercover area,” said Russell, who previously served as principal at Spencer and Dunsmuir. “The space for students is phenomenal.”
The school has a wood shop, band hall, foods room and drama room, said Russell, who was part of the consultation committee for the school planning process, and got the job as principal a year later.
“I got to look at plans and watch this thing grow from the ground up.”
An open house for parents is set for Nov. 24.
The Ministry of Education has approved $227 million in funding for 2,280 students seats in the fast-growing Sooke School District over the past five years. That includes a yet-to-be-built 480-seat elementary school in south Langford, a 600-seat expansion at Royal Bay Secondary and purchase of sites for three future schools.
About 600 new students joined the district in September, bringing the overall total to over 12,000. There was a record jump of about 800 students last year.
