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The community of Harbour Landing will be getting a bit of a relief from its school overcrowding issues.
Years after the building was proposed, a location for a school in West Harbour Landing has been confirmed.
The new building will be located on 11 acres of land at the corner of Gordon Road and Campbell Street. The joint-use facility is expected to be completed by 2026, and is still in the process of being designed.
“We knew that the community around Harbour Landing was going to need a new school,” Education Minister Dustin Duncan told reporters Thursday. “Obviously it’s one of the fastest-growing subdivisions in the province. Certainly it is in the city here …
“I think anyone that lives in the area knows that the biggest challenge was going to be where to put that school.”
On Thursday, Duncan attended a media event at St. Kateri Tekakwitha School along with Mayor Sandra Masters, Regina Pasqua MLA Muhammad Fiaz, Regina Public Schools board chair Tara Molson and Regina Catholic School Division chair Shauna Weninger.
A memorandum of understanding has been signed by the City of Regina, the province and both public and Catholic school divisions.
The memorandum outlines that the city will be responsible for acquiring the land, while it will share servicing costs with the provincial government. The two levels of government and developers have been going back and forth on the specifics for a while.
The public school board has instituted a few temporary boundary changes to deal with overcrowding at Harbour Landing School.
“Over the last few weeks we’ve held community consultations taking ideas from families of how we would be able to accommodate what their needs would be, what child-care situations look like and how they’ll be impacted by boundary changes,” Molson told reporters.
Under the board’s plan, some 200 students will be transported by bus from Harbour Landing School to Ethel Milliken School.
The new school in West Harbour Landing is expected to accommodate about 850 students. It also will feature a 90-space child-care centre, and a community space with a kitchen that can be used both by schools as well as the community.
“(Getting to this point) has been a journey and it was a journey that started before my time as an elected member of the school board,” Weninger said. “It has really been a matter of bringing the school boards together. We worked together with the city and the province in order to get this done.
“We didn’t let it (sit on) a back burner. We really needed to stay front and centre on this issue because our communities, both at Harbour Landing as well as St. Kateri, are in a situation that is not ideal for the best learning environment.”
Harbour Landing School and St. Kateri Tekakwitha School opened in 2017 at, or near, their capacity.
The public side of the joint-use school was built for 650 students, but last fall, there were about 1,000 students enrolled — and projections are calling for 1,500 by 2027.
The school has been forced to turn its music room and science labs into classrooms, and there isn’t any space to build more classrooms.
Parents have said kids don’t get the recommended amount of gym time, the school can’t hold a full assembly with the entire student body in attendance, and the music teacher is teaching off of a cart.
The Catholic side currently has about 680 students and has hit its limit for portable classrooms that could be added to make room.
— With files from 980 CJME’s Lisa Schick