School district planners will begin discussions with parents and community members this spring over a design for a new $62.3-million Handsworth Secondary, announced by the province last month.
About 100 parents showed up to a meeting in January after Education Minister Rob Fleming announced plans to replace the 57-year-old school.
The school on Edgewood Road will provide space for 1,400 students and will be built on the existing school site, on the west side of the property. Exactly where the footprint of the school will sit hasn’t been determined yet.
Next steps in the process will be for the school district to hire an architectural firm to come up with a design for the new school.
School district officials will also approach community partners about possible funding for a school track.
“There is no funding in the $62.3 million for a track,” North Vancouver school district Supt. Mark Pearmain told trustees at their last public board meeting. “There is funding for a replacement school and a grass field.”
Pearmain said money for a new track would have to come from a different source of funding.
While Handsworth’s current enrolment is 1,472 (including approximately 100 international students) a school built to a capacity of 1,400 is expected to meet current and future enrolment needs, Pearmain added.
“Secondary schools are built so they can run at over 100 per cent capacity,” he said, in part because not all students take full course loads and not all students are physically at the school at the same time.
Meanwhile, the school district is also moving forward on plans to replace Argyle Secondary.
Architectural drawings for the school are now complete and construction is still expected to get underway at spring break. School district officials are anticipating a completion date of spring 2020 for the new Argyle school “assuming there’s no construction delays,” said Pearmain.
The only school still considered at seismic risk in North Vancouver is now Mountainside Secondary, the former Balmoral school built in 1959 which houses the district’s alternate programs.
Pearmain said ministry staff recently toured the school and are in discussions with school district planners.
As in the case of Argyle and Handsworth, the main issue to be decided by the province will be whether to do seismic upgrades on the school to make it safe in an earthquake or whether to rebuild the school entirely, said Pearmain.
“That will come down to cost,” he said.
The school district is also hoping to gather demographic forecasting information in the coming months in order to submit a long-range facilities plan to the ministry of education by June.
That would include a business case for a new elementary school in Lower Lonsdale, said Pearmain, adding the ministry of education is “aware of the development pressures.”
