New Westminster’s new high school is too small and it’s not even built yet, according to the district’s new superintendent.

Site preparation for the $106.5-million New Westminster Secondary School replacement project is underway, and construction is expected to be complete in two years, with its official opening planned for September 2020. When it’s ready, it’ll have room for 1,900 students but the district’s enrolment projections predict there will be 80 more than that by then.

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“The ministry doesn’t fund on projected enrolment,” says Karim Hachlaf, the school district’s new superintendent. “This project was funded on our current enrolment projections, so the school is built for 1,900.”

And Hachlaf isn’t the only one concerned about the size of the future school.

Former school board chair Brent Atkinson attended a recent board of education meeting to ask trustees what their plans were to address the issue.

“The city council and the city itself is putting up all these condos. We used to project that the condos maybe would (result in) six students or eight students. (But) now because of the cost of single-family homes in the city, the condo that I’m in, there’s probably some 20-odd students,” he later told the Record.

Given the number of towers under construction or in the planning stage in the city, Atkinson is concerned that by the time the new school opens it’ll be bursting with kids.

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that that’s going to develop some students,” he says.

Currently, there are about 1,700 students at the high school. Add an extra 282 international students and the new school’s capacity is exceeded. While Hachlaf expects enrolment to level off over the next few years, he says projections 10 to 20 years down the road paint a very different picture.

“There’s no question the enrolment will exceed 1,900 in the long-term future,” he said.

This is the problem senior administrators at the school district have been grappling with recently, according to Hachlaf.

They need to find a way to mitigate the inevitable or risk losing local students, he says.

QUICK FIX

In an effort to make sure the school is big enough come September 2020, the school district approached the Ministry of Education about expanding the new NWSS immediately.

Hachlaf and his team put together a proposal for the Ministry of Education that would have seen a fourth storey added to the new high school as part of current construction plans. The extra level would relieve the impacts of any immediate and long-range enrolment increases, says Hachlaf.

“For us, it’s not an outward piece – extending the physical plans – it is literally upwards by adding, potentially, an extra level, and that really is looking for that 10- to 20-year forecast that we can see,” he says. “That would be our preference.”

The proposal included a mock up of how the additional floor would fit within the new school’s design and a price tag of about $6 million, Hachlaf adds.

Staff also brought the City of New Westminster on board to guarantee the district would receive the necessary permit approvals in time to keep with the construction schedule.

“It really was a joint effort, which is what we were really excited about. The whole New West community – the school district and our local government, hand in hand,” he adds.

Last week, Hachlaf and staff took a conference call with the project board and the assistant deputy minister to discuss the school district’s proposal. The decision had been made – the ministry denied the district’s request for an addition.

“I was disappointed when I took that conference call,” says Hachlaf.

Among the reasons the ministry gave for its decision was that just across the border in Burnaby there were high schools with low enrolment numbers.

“That was a curious thing,” he says.

This has left the school district with few options, according to Hachlaf.

Because the location of the existing high school and the parking areas along Eighth Street are part of the memorialization area they can’t be used for anything other than a passive park.

“The reality is, with the complexities of the site beyond the school – Massey Theatre, Moody (Park) Arena, the memorialization area – there is no room to build out. And keep in mind that includes adding portables to the property.”

LONG-TERM PLAN

There is one solution that the new superintendent says could solve the district’s long-range enrolment problems – a second high school.

It’s a vision that will be presented to the board of education as part of the district’s new long-range facilities plan in May. (The last time the district conducted a long-range facilities study was in 2007, according to Hachlaf.)

“A secondary high school provides some exciting options,” Hachlaf says. “It would not be anything close to the capacity of the current (school) but that’s the kind of conversation we need to engage in to explore what possibly we want to commit to.”

Hachlaf’s intention is to prepare the school district for the influx of enrolment in the next 10 to 20 years. It’s far off, he admits, but it’s something that needs to be dealt with now or the district risks running into worse problems later on.

“If you’re parking that and not addressing it now, you’re not preparing the school district for growth. The potential discussion about a second high school needs to begin conversations now,” he says. “We want to be prepared for everything in terms of land acquisition.”

Land is at the heart of this vision.

Because the city isn’t going to expand outwards, the New Westminster school district will have to use its current assets for construction or to acquire new land, Hachlaf says.

That’s where the existing New Westminster Secondary School site and the memorialization area come in, he adds.

Phase 2 of the New Westminster Secondary School replacement project includes demolition of the existing school and construction of a park to memorialize the cemetery that NWSS was built over, known as Douglas Road Cemetery. The cemetery was used between 1860 and 1920 as the final resting place for the bodies of the poor, prisoners, stillborn babies and mentally ill patients from Woodlands and Essondale – which later became Riverview. The land was also used by Chinese, Sikh and First Nations communities to bury their dead.

“This property represents a big part of securing the future of the school district,” Hachlaf says.

“We are engaged in conversations with the city looking at part of the Massey Theatre component and the memorialization site out front that they may wish to take over.”

And if the city did take over the memorialization land, it could provide the district with the funds necessary to purchase new land for another high school.

But this is all early days, he adds.

There’s been no deal made with the city and Hachlaf has no idea where – if at all – a second high school would be built.

But at least the conversation is underway, according to Hachlaf.

“It’s exciting with the growth in the school district because it’s not about declining enrolment. It’s the exact opposite,” Hachlaf says.

INTERNATIONAL SOLUTION

But a second high school 10 to 20 years down the road doesn’t solve the new school’s enrolment problem.

So how does a school district free up space in a building destined to be over capacity when its size can’t change?

Reduce the number of students at the school, according to Hachlaf.

Over the next two years, while the new school is under construction, the school district plans to decrease the number of international students at the high school. The goal, which Hachlaf says is far from set in stone, is to cut international student enrolment at New Westminster Secondary School by about half.

“We will not be able to sustain 282 students, which is the current international student enrolment at our secondary school,” he says.

“We have international students in our middle schools as well, and the approach needs to be systematic now because it’s not going to be abrupt.”

One way Hachlaf sees it playing out is allowing international students currently attending a New Westminster middle schools the opportunity to continue to the high school. The reduction will come from limiting the number of incoming international students, he says.

What’s more, because international students are not funded by the Ministry of Education, they are a drain on the district to some degree, Hachlaf says.

Currently, the international program brings in about $3 to $4 million in gross revenue, but that only translates into about 10 per cent or $300,000 to $400,000 in net revenue for the district, according Hachlaf.

The prospect of losing international students doesn’t sit well with Atkinson.

He estimates the international program brings about $2.5 million in revenue into the community through homestays. By reducing the number of students accepted at the high school, he fears the district is risking some residents’ livelihood.

“That’s helping maintain a lot of people in their single-family homes in New Westminster because people, let’s say, who are retired have taxes and utilities and everything to pay it’s kind of a nice adjunct to their income to help them maintain their single-family residence for as long as they wish to,” he says.

But low revenue for the district plus high staffing costs plus increasing enrolment at the high school, and Hachlaf says reducing the number of international students at the high school is the only way to make New Westminster students the priority when the new school opens.

By reducing the number of international students at the new high school to about 140, enrolment will squeeze in just under capacity with an anticipated 1,840 students, Hachlaf estimates.

“We’ll create that space and (we) need to make that reduction,” he says.