Education Matters: space in Neepawa schools

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Published on Friday, November 27, 2015

Submitted by Trustees of the Beautiful Plains School Division

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Neepawa’s population continues to grow, as does our student population in Neepawa schools. It’s a challenge most other rural divisions in the province would love to have.

With the addition of 250 students in Neepawa over the last 4 years, we cannot just squeeze a few more desks into each classroom, it doesn’t work from a space or academic perspective.

One reason is that there is a provincial initiative which limits the class size from Kindergarten to grade three to twenty pupils effective September, 2017. This paired with the reality that we have to monitor class sizes for all grade levels compounds the challenge. For teachers to give our children the personalized attention they need and deserve, there’s a limit to their capacity in the time they have with them.

Our Neepawa schools are currently at capacity and with the expectation of an additional 150 students over the next two years, the challenge of space will become even more prominent. We have space at Brookdale and J.M. Young Schools, and we’ve offered parents the chance to send their children to these smaller schools, but there hasn’t been the uptake required to make this a feasible solution. The disruption to families, teaching staff, bus schedules and most importantly to the students themselves wouldn’t be something the Board of Trustees would want to impose.

In 2013/14 school year we commissioned an independent study of our space capacities by a specialist in educational environments. We then worked with an architectural firm who prepared a proposal that met our needs by extending the footprint of Neepawa Collegiate towards Mountain Avenue. The benefits of such an addition to one of our current schools makes sense for a wide variety of reasons. The location suggested is property that the school division currently owns and it would allow us to share some facilities with the Collegiate such as playing fields, Industrial Arts and Home Economics facilities.

All major construction of school facilities in the province is in the hands of the Public Schools Finance Board. Individual school divisions that have space needs request additional space on an annual basis as part of their five year capital planning process. Beautiful Plains School Division has been keeping the Public Schools Finance Board informed of our growing population since our initial request for 2 portable classrooms at Hazel M. Kellington for the 2012 school year. Since that time, we have forwarded them our student populations, our research and proposals for additional space. In the meantime, we have juggled space by realigning the grade six students from Hazel M. Kellington to Neepawa Collegiate, and have added extra portables to both schools. It may soon be necessary to relocate the grade five students to Neepawa Collegiate as well as there is not any more room on Hazel M. Kellington’s property for additional portables. Such a move would require us to add to the number of portables at Neepawa Collegiate.

Major construction takes time and approval can take even longer. The Public Schools Finance Board has the entire province’s needs to consider, a finite budget and many regulations and procedures to work through. Even a simple construction project such as a portable classroom can run into delays — look at how the most recent portable at Neepawa Collegiate is still not occupied by students when it was approved by the province in March.

Despite delays and some minor congestion in our Neepawa schools, challenges are being addressed with a great deal of careful planning. The Beautiful Plains School Divisions board of trustees would like to assure the public that proactive planning for the future continues and our students are continuing to receive a quality education.