New Brunswick’s education minister revealed the site where Hanwell’s new K-8 school will be built – next door to the municipality’s community centre.
The school will be built to handle 650 students, 450 of them from the Hanwell community itself. Right now, those students are being bused to schools in Fredericton, where overcrowding is a problem. Modular classrooms make up 16 per cent of all classrooms on the city’s south side.
The school was announced in December, during the Conservative government’s capital budget. It came with the decision to halt the planning for two other schools, in Moncton and in Campbellton.
Although the new Hanwell school will be in his riding, Dominic Cardy says it wasn’t his decision.
“I will take the advice of the people who are experts at building schools and the location for schools and I will follow their advice,” he said. “I don’t care which constituency it’s in, or which party is in power.”
Anglophone West’s District Education Council says the school in Hanwell was their top priority.
“It’s exciting to know that we will have a place to put students that are now in an overcrowding situation on the south side,” said Council Chair, Kimberley Douglass.
But, she says, there are more issues that need to be addressed.
“A new school on the north side, because we’re in a crisis situation there,” Douglass said. “We have Gibson-Neill school that has been overcrowded since it opened and cannot have any more portables after the seventh one was added this summer. There’s no more room.”
Earlier this year, the council voted to close four Fredericton area schools and replace them with two new schools.
It would mean merging two schools on Fredericton's south side -- Liverpool Street, which has 323 students, with Forest Hill, and its 126 students. It would also merge two on Fredericton's north side -- McAdam Avenue, which has 66 students, with Nashwaaksis Memorial's 351 students.
But Douglass says the council’s number one priority is getting a mid-life upgrade for Oromocto High School.
Construction on the new Hanwell school is slated to begin next spring. The school is scheduled to open in January of 2022.
