Langley asks province to fund school expansion

The City of Langley wants the province to provide funding for school expansions to address overcrowding caused by rapid population growth.

Langley Mayor Nathan Pachal says the student to classroom ratio is over capacity and with the city’s SkyTrain expansion plan, it will only get worse.

“We know that our schools are absolutely crammed with students, and we know that with the SkyTrain coming in the next three, four years it’s only going to exacerbate the situation,” he said.

The Langley School District tells CityNews that in the last three years, school enrolment has increased by one thousand students per year — specifically 1,267 new students in the last year. Plus, the city says the number of multifamily housing projects over the last four years show an annual addition of five to eight per cent to the existing housing stock.

“With the new provincial housing target, that’s only going to further increase the amount of folks coming into our city,” said Pachal.

Langley City says the Nicomekl neighbourhood is experiencing the highest growth, making 80 per cent of Langley’s net population growth.

“There will be another 165 students in the Nicomekl neighbourhood over the next four years and we desperately need to expand Nicomekl Elementary School immediately to address this increase,” said Mayor Pachal.

“It also happens to be the school nearest to the SkyTrain stations will be, along with Douglas Elementary School at a very local level, so we know those schools will need to be expanded.”

To address this overcrowding, the district has proposed an eight classroom expansion to the Nicomekl Elementary school, but is awaiting approval and funding from the Ministry of Education.

“The eight-classroom expansion scheduled for 2025/26 is a positive step but we can’t wait that long. We need a firm commitment from the Provincial Government to approve the estimated cost of $28,030,139 for the expansion project and/or advance funding for this project to 2024/25,” said Pachal.

“We’re hoping that we can be proactive and actually get the schools built before we have overcrowded classrooms.”

To ease enrolment pressures, the district has changed its boundaries for where students coming to some of its schools are located. These changes will come into effect in September 2025.

The district has also started work on a 12 classroom addition at Langley Secondary School. This is the school that most high school-aged students living in the City of Langley attend, the district says. This addition is expected to be completed by the fall of 2025.

CityNews has reached out to the province for a comment.

–With files from Maria Vinca.