A major expansion announced Friday for Fleetwood Park Secondary School in Surrey would add 800 new seats to help alleviate overcrowding in the school district.
The Ministry of Education and Child Care announced a $78.6 million investment on Friday for a four-storey addition, expected to open by 2029.
B.C.’s Education Minister Rachna Singh says the expansion is needed to keep up with the rapid population growth the city is facing.
“As more families move to Surrey, we are working to keep the growth and services in our schools,” Singh told reporters during a news conference. “We know that parents want to send their kids to quality schools close to home.”
The new expansion will include additional classroom space, an Indigenous learning and meeting area, a neighbourhood learning center, and child-care facilities. However, concerns remain about whether it will be enough, given the significant increases in enrolment the district has experienced.
Surrey schools have seen an average of 2,400 additional students per year over the last two years, compared to 800 new students per year in the previous decade — a 200 per cent increase in school enrolment.
“So between 2024 and 2029, there’s going to be thousands and thousands more students here, and yet this announcement is just for 800 new student seats,” Lizanne Foster, the president of the Surrey Teachers’ Association, told CBC News. “[It will] hardly make a dent.”
Fleetwood Park Secondary is among the schools struggling with overcrowding, often relying on temporary portable structures.
Some schools also had to turn away in-catchment students for lack of space. Starting next month as students return to class, a third of Surrey’s high schools will extend the school day, creating an additional learning period to boost capacity by 15 per cent.
Surrey parent Cindy Dalglish, whose daughters have attended overcrowded schools for years, wants to see improvement now rather than five years down the line.
“Waiting five years means that the issue is going to be exacerbated even more for that time frame,” she told CBC News.
She also noted that upcoming developments, like the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension near Fleetwood Park Secondary, scheduled to be complete by 2029, will likely further increase student enrolment.
To meet the rising demand, the province needs to expand classrooms in dozens of other schools, says Foster.
The Surrey school district’s five-year capital plan identifies a need for 10 new schools and expanded classrooms at 16 other schools.
Foster is calling on the provincial government to prioritize these needs.
B.C.’s Education Minister Rachna Singh said Surrey schools are under pressure due to the significant population growth driven by an influx of international students and temporary foreign workers.
“When they were in opposition, they were so vocal and they were so supportive of schools, and it’s really disappointing to see that they haven’t really quite lived up to the expectation,” she said.
According to the minister, the expansion at Fleetwood Park is part of broader efforts to address the district’s overcrowding, including new classroom spaces at several elementary schools and the ongoing construction of new schools.
In a statement Friday, the province said it has committed nearly $900 million over the past seven years to boost Surrey’s school capacity by over 14,000 new students.
It says it has also approved $5.1 billion for new and improved schools and land purchases for schools in the province, creating more than 35,000 new student spaces.