More modulars needed at overflowing school

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This article was published 18/02/2023 (1213 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Brandon School Division is asking the provincial government to provide two more modular classrooms to Maryland Park School, which is currently overcapacity by 172 pupils.

There are 622 students at Maryland Park, far above the school’s capacity of 450 pupils. The school already has four modular classrooms on site, but they won’t be ready for occupancy until next month.

Because of the overflow, Maryland staff are forced to repurpose facilities designed for specialty programs like band, home economics and industrial arts for regular day-to-day classroom activities.

Linda Ross, chair of the Brandon school board, told the Sun on Friday that Maryland Park was originally designed to house 650 students, but only reached a 450 threshold when the school first opened its doors in January 2021.

While the province promised to fill in the gap by building eight additional classrooms, Ross said construction on the expansion hasn’t even started, forcing the division to use modular classrooms as a temporary solution.

“We don’t like modulars, but we need additional space,” she said.

“It is a necessary evil. There aren’t washrooms in the modulars. That means kids have to go outside to go into the main part of the building. If you go inside [the modulars], they’re actually lovely spaces, but they’re not attached to the school and that’s a serious drawback.”

Construction of Maryland Park was commissioned to accommodate student overpopulation across all Brandon schools, with the division expecting to reach an estimated 9,427 students by next fall (a 0.7 per cent increase over the current student body).

To deal with this issue, BSD has installed modular classrooms at other schools in the division including Alexander, Betty Gibson, Earl Oxford, Meadows and École New Era.

During Monday’s board meeting, trustees also referenced the fact that Maryland Park staff will face additional strain once a nearby subdivision on Portola Drive is finally completed and more young families have the option of enrolling their children in the kindergarten to Grade 8 school.

Ross hopes the province signs off on the two additional modular classrooms for the 2023-24 academic year, as it would bring Maryland up to six units that can accommodate 25 students each.

But in the meantime, the board chair is also looking for the province to come through on its promise to fund the eight permanent classrooms for Maryland.

“The school was designed so that it could have a capacity of up to 650 and it was designed with an addition in mind,” she said.

“Some of that preliminary work has been done to make it as easy as possible to make that addition.”

Ross said that while the province would foot the bill for the two additional modular classrooms at Maryland, BSD would still be responsible for some incidental costs, including increased custodial services.

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

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