Surrey School District says it’s being used as ‘pawn’ in feud between city and province
Posted December 18, 2023 6:46 pm.
Last Updated December 18, 2023 10:25 pm.
The chair of the Surrey School District’s board of trustees says she feels like Surrey’s schools — and students — are being used as pawns in a dispute between the city and the province.
This comes after city council voted last week to reject the district’s eligible sites proposal, which would have been sent to the province to request funding.
Chair Laurie Larsen says the proposal is routinely put forward every year and lays out the region’s projected growth as well as possible sites that could be used for everything from new classroom additions to new schools.
“We really do feel like we’re the pawn, we’re caught in the middle, because we’ve always worked well with the city and the ministry,” she said.
“We’ve never had a problem; we have countless liaison meetings where we’ve discussed ways to acquire sites ahead of time where they’re needed.”
But Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke says the school district’s plan was prepared well before the announcement of the province’s new housing bills, which were passed during the fall session. The numerous bills are aimed at tackling housing affordability and include changing zoning rules to allow for more housing to be built, increasing density.
“The ramifications of the new housing regulations will likely result in a significant increase in the number of students in Surrey,” Locke said in a statement Monday. “Council, unanimously, disagrees with the School Board’s projection of students in its 10-year Capital Plan. To date, it is fair to say that with the roughly 400 portables at Surrey schools, the student projections have been consistently underestimated.”
Locke said the suggestion that council’s rejection of the proposal is anything other than advocating for the best interests of Surrey students is “grossly inaccurate and offensive.”
Meanwhile, the mayor of the Township of Langley is looking at Surrey’s school capacity challenges in as a cautionary tale for his community, one he says the province’s one-size-fits-all housing legislation is going to make even worse.
Eric Woodward says it’s irresponsible for the province to mandate cities increase housing density without ensuring there are schools to support the population, and he doesn’t think the province is doing enough to ensure there’s infrastructure to keep pace with growth.
But B.C. Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon says the province is not ignoring schools while working on increasing housing supply.
“We’ve been working closely with the school boards to ensure that there’s a plan for that growth.”
Kahlon says it’s not an either-or situation as far as balancing housing with supporting infrastructure like health care and education. He says the province needs both.
In a written statement, the ministry says the province is working at different ways to add schools and classrooms, including innovative building approaches like prefabricated additions, also known as portables.
But one of the complaints in both Surrey and Langley Township is schools are relying too heavily on portables, and Woodward says the township already has about 200 of them.
Woodward has spoken out about the new B.C.-wide housing legislation since it was introduced, saying it does not fit all communities, especially ones like his and Surrey.
Now, with Surrey School District’s proposal rejected, the Ministry of Education and Child Care must appoint a facilitator to help the district and the city work out their differences.
