Parents, alumni say plans for Eric Hamber Secondary replacement inadequate

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — Students at Vancouver’s Eric Hamber secondary are about to get a new school, but not everyone is excited about the proposed facility.

The current school is known for its drama, sports and music departments. The building is in need of seismic upgrades, and so a new school will be built next to it. The provincial government is putting $79.3 million toward replacing the school, which is the largest seismic project in Vancouver’s history.

But although it will be safer, some other aspects of the new building aren’t winning the approval of parents and alumni.

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Andrea Nicholson, coordinator of the Eric Hamber Alumni Association, is worried the new school won’t be big enough because of the development at the nearby Heather Lands and Oakridge Centre.

She wonders why the new school will apparently have less gym space and no auditorium the one they have now.

“If you’re putting this much money into a build, it better be right,” she says. “Hamber has a huge legacy of music, the arts, drama, trades… of really reaching multiple areas for students.”

The PAC says the new school will be 26 per cent smaller than the current one, and the gym will be reduced by 20 per cent.

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Nicholson welcomes the seismic upgrades, but says it’s not just about creating a safer building.

“You’re putting students into a seismically safe building, but not a school environment that offers them the programs and the facilities to teach accordingly,” she says.

The old school won’t be torn down right away after the new one is completed. It will be used as classroom space while other schools get their upgrades. The school will be lose sports field space as a result.

Construction on the new school is expected to start in January 2020 and finish early 2022.

Alumni association starts petition

The Eric Hamber Alumni Association and PAC has started a petition asking the education minister to consult and collaborate with alumni, the PAC, staff, students and the community on the building’s design.

“The importance of sports, music, and fine arts is well-documented. It is deeply unfair and unacceptable to build a school that cannot offer these things in an adequate way. A replacement school should not be a downgrade. If we lose the programs that make Eric Hamber the special school it is, we are effectively getting a safer school, but are doing so at the expense of our children’s education.”

More than 1,700 have signed the petition as of Friday evening.

Parent advisory group pressures education minister on new school facilities

In a letter sent education minister Rob Fleming, the Eric Hamber Secondary PAC says they are grateful for the new school design, but say the new facility lacks some of the good qualities of the current school.

“In the existing school, three gymnasiums, three additional smaller spaces not designed for physical activity, and three outdoor fields are fully utilized everyday with six physical education classes running concurrently every period, five days a week,” writes the PAC co-chair Stephanie Yada. “The demand on these existing spaces is extremely high with countless extra-curricular internal and external teams and clubs all vying for space.”

They also note they will lose the running track for track and field, two large fields used for football.

“This results in a substantial reduction of meaningful physical education opportunities for Hamber students, including access to scheduled classes and extra-curricular physical and challenging team-based experiences,” she writes. “As parents, we struggle to keep our teens active and school-based activities are often the only means to achieving this. It is unthinkable that the largest build of this kind in the province will not meet the needs of future generations of young people.”

NEWS 1130 has reached out to the Ministry of Education.

Letter sent by Eric Hamber Secondary PAC to the Minister of Education Rob Fleming

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