Collège Jeanne-Sauvé construction forces multiple-school student shuffle

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This article was published 16/02/2022 (1362 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More than 230 junior high students in St. Vital will be temporarily shuffled to new schools next year to accommodate classroom closures at Collège Jeanne-Sauvé amid the long-awaited expansion of the French immersion facility.

Senior administrators in the Louis Riel School Division have made public their plans to accommodate learning in the southwest corner of the division in 2022-23, when nine classrooms in the Grade 9-12 building are shuttered due to ongoing construction.

“Collège Jeanne-Sauvé’s enrolment is growing and has been growing for some years. In fact, the school is already operating at capacity and above,” Jeff Anderson, assistant superintendent of instructional services, said during a board meeting Tuesday evening.

The high school’s student population — which has been around 630 throughout the COVID-19 pandemic — is anticipated to reach upwards of 850 in 10 years, per division projections. As is, the building can accommodate around 650 learners.

The latest addition to 1128 Dakota St. facility involves a two-storey, 16-room expansion with an elevator, science lab upgrades, and both a new fitness facility and music room.

The division plans to relocate all incoming CJS Grade 9 students to Minnetonka School, a nearby K-8 English school with available learning space, for one year while construction is ongoing.

“We were looking for a place where we would be able to keep students together, perhaps in a wing of a school, somewhere where they would be able to be a school within a school to maintain the quality of their French immersion learning environment,” Anderson said, adding learners will be able to access extracurricular activities both at Minnetonka and CJS, which are a 24-minute walk apart.

Since there is not quite enough room for all of the approximately 180 new Grade 9 students at the elementary school, the reconfiguration will require students who had planned to attend grades 7 and 8 at 200 Minnetonka St. next year — a cohort of roughly 50 pupils — move to a neighbouring elementary school.

Darwin School, a K-8 English building at 175 Darwin St., has ample room for all of these students and is only one kilometre north of Minnetonka, Anderson said, as he explained the reasoning behind the division’s blueprint this week.

The final community affected by the year-long reorganization is Dr. D.W. Penner School, a feeder school for both Minnetonka and Darwin at present; Grade 6 graduates will all go to Darwin this fall.

Charlene Sacher said she was concerned when she first received an email about the looming changes that will affect her daughter, who will soon be starting Grade 9 at CJS.

Last year, Sacher’s eldest child and her peers had to temporarily move from their home school of École Varennes to Windsor School so there could be adequate physical distancing in all LRSD classes. If all goes as planned and she is able to attend CJS for Grade 10 in 2023-24, she will have studied at four schools in four years.

“There’s still a little bit of nerves, just in terms of making (multiple transitions),” said Sacher, president of the parent committee at École Varennes. “My daughter even said it’s always tricky going to a new building, but she’s happy to know she’s going to be with all of her Grade 9 friends, and that it’s just going to be the Grade 9s, so she’ll get to know the other school kids.”

The division has indicated it cannot allow CJS feeder school students to stick around at their current buildings for one extra year because they are all packed. École Varennes capacity is estimated to reach 96 per cent next year, while École Marie-Anne-Gaboury and École George-McDowell are expected to reach 93 per cent and 119 per cent, respectively.

“There’s going to be a little bit of noise and dust in the process, but there’s recognition that this (CJS expansion) is very much needed,” said Sandy Nemeth, a trustee who oversees Ward 3, the southwest section of LRSD.

Nemeth said community members have questions about logistics ranging from transportation to course offerings.

(The division is providing families with information on temporary transit options, while student schedules will be adjusted on a case-by-case basis.)

At the same time, the trustee said families understand the construction is necessary to address the growth of French immersion throughout the division and the fact there are only two local milieu high schools: CJS and Collège Béliveau.

Sacher, a mother of three students in LRSD, said she is grateful school leaders have been providing lots of communication about the transition and is excited her daughter’s class will be among the first to benefit from upgrades to CJS when they are finally complete.

In 2019, the high school underwent $4.1 million in renovations to create a new commons area, indoor and outdoor theatre, and front entrance.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie