New school to begin construction in Waverley West

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This article was published 05/05/2015 (3957 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

That’s 35 new schools under the NDP and counting, Premier Greg Selinger declared this morning as he turned sod for a new kindergarten-to-Grade-8 school in Waverley West.

The school on Kirkbridge Drive in the South Pointe neighbourhood can accommodate 800 kids and will include 74 daycare spaces. It could open as early as the fall of 2016.

“People have wanted it for a long time,” Selinger noted.

“This area showed the greatest need,” he said, explaining why it was the next on the government’s funding list. “It’s driven by total school demand, and by other schools in the area.

“Last year we had a record number of people move to Manitoba,” said Selinger.

Pembina Trails School Division superintendent Ted Fransen said Waverley West students are scattered throughout the division, but the new school’s kids primarily go to Bonnycastle, Acadia, and Ryerson schools.

“It’ll be a relief — they’re all over full capacity. This school has not come a day too soon,” Fransen said.

It will be the English track school for South Pointe, but French immersion students will also come from Fairfield Park and Richmond West.

Education Minister James Allum would not divulge what the next school will be or how soon it will be announced, but did say the province has a capital projects request list of a dozen schools costing several hundreds of millions of dollars.

Among them are pleas for schools in Brandon, Minnedosa, Sage Creek, and the new Waterford Green development in northwest Winnipeg.

Fransen said that Pembina Trails has scaled back its initial forecast of how many schools Waverley West will need from six to four, with one high school.

Pembina Trails has been flooded with community suggestions for a name for the school, and has not yet made a choice.