COLWOOD – The Province just announced they have purchased an elementary school site in Colwood’s Royal Bay neighbourhood.
SD62 Board Chair Ravi Parmar, MLA Mitzi Dean and Mayor Rob Martin make the announcement at Royal Bay Secondary, masked and distanced
“This is wonderful news for our fast-growing, family-friendly, seaside community in Colwood,” said Mayor Rob Martin. “It’s important for the growing number of families in Royal Bay and will relieve pressure in our other elementary schools which are bursting at the seams. School District 62 is doing a fantastic job of understanding the pace of new development in combination with enrollment, to be proactive in planning to meet the needs of students and families here in Colwood and throughout the West Shore.”
The Government of BC has provided the Sooke School District with $8.3 million to purchase property for a new elementary school in the Royal Bay development, between Latoria Boulevard and Metchosin Road. The Sooke School District is providing an additional $1.2 million.
This is the fifth school site purchase in the district funded by the Province in the last three years.
With the property acquired, the Ministry of Education will work with the Sooke School District to find the best path forward to building a new elementary school on the site. This will provide local students with a modern learning environment and a shorter commute, and free up more student spaces at nearby schools.
This property purchase is among the eight school capital projects that the Province has funded in the past three years in the Sooke School District. This includes the $29.9-million addition that opened for Royal Bay Secondary students last week, a new elementary school, a new middle school and five site purchases, for a total of $187 million.
“The SD62 Board of Education would like to thank the provincial government for the collaborative partnership that has led to acquiring a school site in this growing community,” said Ravi Parmar, board chair, Sooke School District Board of Education. “We’re excited about the prospect of one day, in the near future, building a school for the hundreds of families that call Royal Bay home.”
The map below gives a sense of the location, with the upper blue area showing the current Royal Bay Secondary School and the lower blue area being the new elementary school site.
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