This update was provided in Councillor Glen Gower’s posts and used with permission.
OCDSB Trustee Lynn Scott asked us to share this update with Stittsville residents.
Many of you are asking how our new Stittsville public high school is coming along. The OCDSB has acquired the site, at the intersection of Robert Grant Avenue and Cope Drive. We have also engaged the architectural firm of Edward Cuhaci & Associates to design the school. OCDSB staff are busy engaging with the architects and with City of Ottawa staff to prepare a site plan and get it through the city’s approval process, a process that will be ongoing for many months to come.
Preliminary work with the architects is underway to match up what we would like to see as essential components in the school design with the character of the site and with the amount of capital funding from the province.
OCDSB Planning staff are preparing for a large-scale accommodation review that will involve consultation with all our school communities in Stittsville, Goulbourn and Rideau to establish a sustainable attendance boundary for the new high school. The school configuration is still expected to include Grades 7 to 12, and the accommodation review will therefore also include potential changes to programs and attendance boundaries for our existing elementary schools and for South Carleton High School.
Historically it has taken at least two years to build a high school, but with some processes now taking more time than they used to require, we are hoping for the high school to open in 2021, and expect that its enrolment will begin with the lower grades and phase to a full Grades 9 to 12 over several years.
In the meantime, the OCDSB is proceeding as of this month, February 2019, with a small-scale boundary study to establish an attendance boundary for a new elementary school in the Fernbank lands. This elementary school is currently the OCDSB’s number one capital priority, but it has not yet been funded by the provincial government. This school will be in the southern part of the Blackstone development, and its boundary will mean changes to attendance boundaries for specific programs at John Young ES, Bridlewood ES, Westwind PS, A. Lorne Cassidy ES. These school communities and local community associations have representatives in the working group just established for this boundary study. At least one public consultation meeting is planned for May 2019, before the working group sends its report to the Board in June.
If you have any questions, please contact me at lynn.scott@ocdsb.ca.
I highly doubt the public high school will be open by 2021. Our trustee must have forgot it is already 2019. Comments like “At least two years to build”, “some processes now taking more time than they used to require”, a “large-scale accommodation review”, and “a process that will be ongoing for many months to come” all sound like an opening no sooner than 2023 or 2024 in my opinion. I moved to Stittsville in 2003 and there was already a highlighted need to build a public high school. Things certainly don’t move very quickly in the OCDSB.
Please place the blame for the time delay with the body responsible – the provincial government. The only source for school construction funding a school board has is the provincial government.
There is no point in doing detailed planning for a school (architect, boundary studies) until the Ministry of Education (the provincial government) have committed the funding. Your question on why the delay should be addressed to the previous provincial government.
We also need to brace ourselves for portables when the building opens – the government funds the existing number of students available for the new building, not the projected number.
That would back fire as Ontario will fund projects that are shovel ready if you don’t have a plan they will say sorry come to us when your ready.
It does not take 5 years to build a school.