Surrey votes to extend school days to combat overcrowding in some schools

Changes are coming to some Surrey Schools in September.

The school board voted Wednesday night to have some high schools in the Surrey School District move to an extended day schedule, meaning some students will have earlier starts and some will have later starts.

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“We’re looking at a five-block day; some students will do (blocks) one through four, and some students will do (blocks) two through five, so we can alleviate the pressure of the earlier and latter part of the day,” said Gary Tymoschuk, vice-chair of the Surrey Board of Education.

Trustees explained the move is due to persistent overcrowding in the district, and not enough capital funding from the provincial government for new schools.

The district says it understands the change will cause problems for families who have two kids now operating on different schedules, for those who rely on older kids to watch younger ones or pick them up after school, and for those in extra-curricular activities.

“It’s not an ideal solution, but it’s where we’re stuck at right now. The number one reason we’d want to make a big change in schools would be for educational reasons — well, that’s certainly not the case here,” said board trustee Bob Holmes.

Trustee Terry Allen noted that it’s not a choice the district wants to make, but it’s left with no option with funding for new schools far behind what the city needs.

“Can you imagine, you’ve got to juggle space to try to get children into school to have the appropriate education that we wish they can have. [It’s] totally beyond the realm of reality. And yet, as far as I can see, nobody seems to care,” Allen said.

Allen shared that the prefabricated portable classrooms were not utilized for “growth,” but rather, to deal with the district’s current enrollment levels.

District staff will spend the next few weeks analyzing which schools will have to move to the new model, with the board suggesting it will be about one third of the city’s high schools.

Superintendent Mark Pearmain explained that, unlike other instances where individual schools have had to implement the model, this is not a temporary measure for the district.

“I would fully expect, for the board’s awareness, that we would be coming back next year with a very similar presentation with the possibility of adding more. And we would expect that over the next three to four school years,” he explained.

“The reality for us as a school district is that previously, we were accustomed to … growing at about 800 students a year. But we’re projecting growth in [the thousands], 2,200 up to 2,700,” Pearmain added.

He explained that most secondary schools in the district have a capacity of 1,500 students. “You can see that just by growth alone, we’re falling behind.”

“We recognize that anything we do does have an effect on our community, and our parents, and our staff. But it’s also a reality for us to ensure that we can provide the quality education in the spaces that we have for our students.”

Trustees noted the move will cost money and won’t fully solve the issues the district is facing, however, they believe the only alternative is more portables which the district can’t afford to do.

In a statement, the Ministry of Education and Child Care tells CityNews that since 2017, it has approved $750 million dollars for capital projects in Surrey to create more than 12,000 new student seats. It says this was part of a $4 billion investment to fund education infrastructure over the past six years.

As well, it says, construction on two new elementrary schools and the expansion of two others are ongoing.

It adds the province looks forward to sharing more school projects and expansions coming to high-growth communities soon.

Dean McGee is a parent of a student at Fleetwood Park Secondary, one of the most crowded high schools in the city. He says the proposed schedule would cause troubles for parents.

“Sports before school, after school. That’s overlapping with hockey practices or swimming practices. You’ve got two or three kids at the school, they’ve got different schedules, it’s going to be really hard to deal with,” McGee told CityNews.

The school board will be finalizing its scheduling plans in the coming weeks and will notify parents as soon as possible. If approved, about one-third of Surrey secondary schools will adopt the new schedule.

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