Construction delayed on four Surrey schools
Posted November 10, 2018 12:01 am.
Last Updated November 10, 2018 12:03 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
SURREY (NEWS 1130) – With the Surrey School District expanding by a thousand students a year and 320 portables used to accommodate those students, a number of new schools are scheduled to open in the next few years.
But it will take a little longer to build some of them due to budget shortfalls, according to the district’s Doug Strachan.
“We found that in going to tender for construction that the budget provided by the provincial government to build the schools isn’t reflecting market conditions.”
Four planned schools are now having their budgets re-assessed: Maddaugh Road Elementary, Edgewood Drive Area Elementary, Pacific Heights Elementary, and Grandview Heights Secondary.
Strachan says in those cases the district has to go back to the province to ask for more funding, but it’s unknown how the extra step in the building process is going to affect timelines.
“It depends on how long it takes for the Ministry of Education to come back with approval and whether it needs changes to the drawings, or something like that,” he says, pointing out that other factors such as permits, site conditions and weather also impact construction schedules.
It’s hoped the four schools will still be open in 2020.
“It’s hard to say whether it will add months, or not, because we push things along as best we can and make up time as best we can. They can still be open in the same school year they were supposed to,” says Strachan.
Roughly a third of Surrey schools are overcapacity. The district hopes to build 12 new schools by 2022.
