The first Facilities Planning Committee of the year was held at the Education Centre on Wednesday, January 18. Watch the full meeting or view the agenda for details.

The meeting began with the recommendation to rename Lord Roberts Elementary. The District received a request in spring 2022 from the Lord Roberts school community to rename the school. As per AP 541 – Appendix A Renaming existing school facilities, the District considered the proposal to re-name a school should the existing name is deemed to no longer serve the needs of the school population and no longer align with the District’s core values and strategic priorities. After going through the renaming process, the District recommended renaming Lord Roberts Elementary, in which trustee members of the committee voted in support of and moved the motion to the Board for final approval. 

Next, District staff presented the engagement summary results from the Carleton Boundary Changes. As a result of a fire damaging Carleton Elementary, the District proposed to reduce the Carleton catchment area and expand catchment boundaries for Cunningham, Weir and MacCorkindale schools. The proposed catchment adjustments align with established enrolment patterns from the impacted school communities since 2016. The engagement findings showed that most (62 per cent) were in favour of the proposed changes with many remarking in the survey, at information sessions and through email, that this change should have been made sooner by the District. Trustee committee members supported the recommendation to change the Carleton boundary catchment and moved the motion to the Board for final approval.  

Following this, District staff gave an enrolment update for the 2022-2023 school year. The pandemic impacted established historic enrolment trends due to disruptions in the movement of people both globally and locally. As a result, similar to other districts in the province, enrolment for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years saw a decline. As the world began to open up in the 2022-2023 school year, enrolment in the VSB, and other surrounding school districts, experienced widespread increases. For the District, enrolment increased by 2.5 per cent in September 2022 when compared to the same time in 2021. The increase in new student registrations is attributed to a combination of factors including: 

• Increased global movement of people as the impact of the pandemic on travel wanes 

• Geopolitical events particularly in Hong Kong and China 

• Increasing federal immigration targets for Canada

Further details about the enrolment update can be found in the committee agenda package.  

Lastly, District staff presented the engagement plan, as per Board Policy 20, to consider the potential declaration of the QEA site as surplus to the educational needs of the District. As per its policy, the Board must first determine if the site is surplus to the District’s educational needs before considering future land use possibilities, such as selling or leasing the land long-term. Beginning in February, the District plans to engage with stakeholders, the three host Nations, school communities and neighbourhood associations in the vicinity of the QEA site, as well as other civic agencies about the site being surplus to the District’s needs, leading to a disposal of the site to Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique (CSF), the Francophone public school board. The engagement will help inform the Board’s decision, which will be made at a public Board meeting on April 3, 2023.