Sage Creek school bursting at seams, division expects new facility

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This article was published 18/02/2020 (1773 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Sage Creek community is anxiously awaiting a provincial announcement about a new school in the community to alleviate overcrowding in its dual-track grade school.

Sage Creek School was designed for 600 students between kindergarten and Grade 8, but the Louis Riel School Division has since had to downsize the school’s grade roster to K-6 due to high enrolment; there are currently 701 students.

“The sooner we hear a second school will be built, the better,” said Christian Michalik, the division’s superintendent.

Last year, the division’s request for portables to respond to overflowing classrooms was rejected; the province cited the need to fill spaces in other division schools — a similar message Pembina Trails School Division received last week when its latest trailer-classroom request was denied.

“The solution isn’t more portables, it is building schools,” Michalik said, adding Sage Creek School has already turned learning commons spaces into classrooms to deal with crowding. That’s in addition to busing Grade 7 and 8 students to Collège Béliveau in Windsor Park.

The division projects the school’s enrolment will increase by almost 200 students over capacity next year, with projections of students in the school’s catchment to rise above 1,100 by 2022. The division’s mantra for the area, Michalik added, has been “two by ’22.”

During their 2019 provincial re-election campaign, the Progressive Conservatives promised to build 13 new schools, including eight in Winnipeg, over the next decade.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie