Crown grant for Batchelor Heights elementary gets approval, SD73 continues advocacy for Aberdeen high school

Batch school moves forward

Photo: Castanet

This home plate-shaped property off Hook Drive in Batchelor Heights is slated to become home to a new elementary school.

The Kamloops-Thompson school district's application for a long-delayed Crown grant that would pave the way for a much needed elementary school in Batchelor Heights has now been given the green light.

The SD73 board of education was told in December the Crown grant that would allow it to purchase the land was in the ministry’s “end stages.”

SD73 board chair Heather Grieve said the Crown grant had now been approved.

Now that the Crown grant application has been approved, SD73 will be eligible for the funding. Next steps for the district are to submit updated enrolment projections and cost estimates to the ministry.

“We continue to advocate to the ministry for the funding for Batchelor Heights elementary,” Grieve said.

SD73 first asked the ministry for funding for the new school last spring, after it received a commitment for the Crown grant.

In November, SD73 told the ministry that despite sweeping catchment changes that took place last year on the North Shore, the only way to alleviate space pressures and accommodate the number of students in Westsyde and Batchelor Heights would be to build a new school.

Pressure builds on south side

Grieve said space pressures on the south shore of the city are continuing to build.

“The need for a secondary school in Aberdeen just becomes more and more ever present — a priority for us,” she said.

An Aberdeen secondary school is SD73’s top capital priority. The school district received provincial funding approval to purchase land for the new high school last year — a plot at the top of Pacific Way.

Grieve said a new secondary in Aberdeen is “desperately” needed and said it could take six to seven years from the time ministry support is given to the school welcoming its first students.

She said enrolment pressures are building at Sa-Hali secondary and South Kamloops secondary, and Valleyview Secondary would likely need portables “in the not so distant future” — despite a massive $33-million expansion that only wrapped up in 2022.

Photo: Castanet

This lot on Pacific Way is the proposed location for a new secondary school in Aberdeen.