The need for a new high school in Guelph’s south end continues to be a growing concern.
For the fourth straight year the Upper Grand District School Board has made an application to the province for a new 1,200-student school that would likely go on Arkell Road.
It is the boards top capital priority.
The school board says there are already 600 students within walking distance of the proposed location, students who are currently bussed to Centennial CVI or John F. Ross high schools.
The pressure is being mostly felt at Centennial CVI, where this October there will be 1,512 students in a school where the board says capacity is 1,167.
Even if a new school were granted by the Ministry of Education, it would take up to three years to get it built.
The board expects to hear back on its application late this year or early next year, said Jennifer Passy, the board’s Manager of Planning.
Passy said that there is limited space for portables (Centennial already has six) and that shifting school boundaries doesn’t really address the core issue, given that the board expects all city high schools to be over capacity in five years.
“You’re just moving the problem around. There’s no real way to address the situation by moving boundaries,” Passy said.
“In our perspective, the only real way to address the situation is to provide additional capacity.”
The ministry maintains a three-year work plan for new schools, retrofits and additions.
“The first application was a bit of a placeholder, that this was going to be becoming an issue, but potentially not within the three-year window,” Passy said.
“But now we’re at the point that we’re saying that we’ve made enough applications and our priority is certainly within the three-year window. We’re saying that this is something that the board needs to address.”
Centennial CVI is at 127 per cent of its capacity. A staff report says that number will balloon to 137 per cent in five years.
“Centennial CVI is projected to get progressively more overcrowded in the next 5 years as a result of residential growth that has occurred within its boundary,” reads the Secondary Identified Schools Report that went the UGDSB in June.
Last year’s request for a new school was denied by the ministry “due to a lack of an immediate need” says the staff report.
The same report says there is a “deficiency” of over 200 secondary pupil places in Guelph and that deficiency escalates to nearly 900 by the 2020/2021 school year and 1,200 four years after that.
Projected Secondary School enrolment in Guelph (Oct. 2017):
Centennial: 1,512
Guelph CVI 1,493
John F. Ross: 1,944
College Heights: 456
