Steady progress on additional school facilities in Neepawa
- Details
- Published on Friday, May 1, 2015
By Eoin Devereux
The Neepawa Banner
The Beautiful Plains School Division remains hopeful that it’s moving closer to the goal of building a new middle school in Neepawa. Beautiful Plains recently completed a revised capital plan and sent that information to the Public Schools Finance Board, which is in charge of providing funding support to school divisions across Manitoba.
BPSD secretary-treasurer Gord Olmstead said part of the revision included new information regarding the construction of a building that would house grade five to eight students. He noted that a year ago, the Division brought in a third party in order to examine the long term needs for the community.
“Last May and June, we hired a third party to look at our schools in Neepawa to ensure that we’re utilizing all the space that we have and also take into consideration the future enrolment growth that we are expecting,” said Olmstead. “The recommendation that came back was that rather than building a new stand alone school, that an addition could be built to the NACI junior high section to develop a middle years school.”
The section of property considered for the addition and owned by the School Division is located near the tennis courts along Mountain Avenue. Olmstead noted all the most recent information was forwarded to the Finance Board in mid-April.
“We’ve sent our request for that addition as part of our five year capital plan process that is submitted to the Public Schools Finance Board and that was sent in for April. 15,” said Olmstead. “We will make sure to have a discussion with the Finance Board about our change in our capital plan and to ensure that they understand the importance of this project to the community.”
Olmstead added that there is also a need in Neepawa for additional daycare spaces and the School Division has also asked for support for that endeavour.
“There has been a program in effect from the Finance Board to have daycares in schools. This year, we did make a request for a stand alone daycare as part of our capital plan request. The way we see it happening on the site right now is that [the daycare facility] would be a stand alone, but on the Neepawa Area Collegiate grounds,” Olmstead said.
Another school facility in Neepawa has been part of the Beautiful Plains School Division long term plan for the past few years. The Public Schools Finance Board will need to go through the Division’s request before any decision could be made.
