Surrey school construction languishes due to provincial delays

There's more than one way to freeze things in Surrey. In January, 74 Avenue in Clayton was covered with snow. A few months later, demolition contractors took down three homes on the street to prepare the site for the building of a new elementary school. Now it is November - and there is still no funding in place for the school to be built, even though funds for it were promised at about the time of this snowfall.

A rally on Oct. 28 once again highlighted the need for more school space in Surrey.

This issue has become even more critical this school year, as a settlement between the B.C. government and the B.C. Teachers Federation following a lengthy court battle means class sizes are significantly smaller. Many Surrey schools were already short of space, and now there is significantly less.

The rally was held at Earl Marriott Secondary and was organized by the Surrey Schools Coalition, a group encompassing parents, city representatives and the business community. Karen Tan, president of the Surrey District Parents Advisory Council, said that $217 million was promised for Surrey schools in January by the former BC Liberal government, but only one school project has actually been funded from it so far – 10 months later.

“Write a cheque,” rally attendees demanded of the provincial government, which has total control of the capital funding for schools.

In my own neighbourhood of Clayton, the school district recently held an open house for neighbours of a new elementary school proposed for a 74 Avenue site. Those attending were told that, while the district demolished the homes that once stood on the site last spring, it has yet to receive any funds to start building the school.

This means that the construction process is nowhere close to beginning. The district cannot let any contracts – it has no money to do so.

When asked when construction was likely to start, officials in attendance said it would likely be a year or more from now, and the new elementary school wouldn’t even be open until 2020 at the earliest.

That would mean that, more than four years after the need was recognized by the provincial government, a school still wouldn’t be open on the site. This is despite significant overcrowding at all Clayton-area schools. The same situation holds true in the Grandview Heights area in South Surrey and the Panorama Ridge-Sullivan areas, and several other pockets in Surrey.

Those attending the open house also heard that the new NDP government has yet to release funds for Surrey schools because of issues related to the transition of power. Given that Education Minister Rob Fleming has visited the Clayton area to see the overcrowding for himself, and that he recently repeated an NDP pledge to get rid of portables on Surrey school sites, that seems almost unbelievable.

The rally was told that delays in school construction go back at least 30 years. Given that overcrowding at Earl Marriott prompted longtime trustee Laurae McNally to first run for school board in the early 1980s, it’s been even longer than that. In fact, there have been overcrowding problems going back to the 1950s, at a time when many Surrey schools were placed on shifts to handle the large numbers of students. At that time, students were in much larger classes than today.

Surrey-Cloverdale MLA Marvin Hunt, who was part of the BC Liberal government that announced the funding in January and is also a former Surrey school trustee and councillor, said the problem of overcrowding in Surrey schools goes back to the Social Credit era – and he’s right. Successive Social Credit, NDP and BC Liberal governments have all been unable to make significant progress in helping schools keep pace with rapid growth in Surrey.

Despite political promises and pledges of a change in approach from a new government, nothing has really changed. Surrey students and teachers continue to learn and teach in hundreds of portable classrooms, while provincial politicians dither and make excuses.