Skip to content

Melfort's Maude Burke Elementary starting year off with new classrooms

MELFORT — Melfort’s Maude Burke Elementary is starting the year off with two brand-new classrooms. “Over the last couple years we’ve seen a sharp increase of students,” saidRandySteciuk, the school’s principal.
Maude Burke Classrooms
Melfort's Maude Burke Elementary is starting the year off with new classrooms, which means they don't have to have classes in the library anymore. Submitted photo by Maude Burke School/Twitter

MELFORT — Melfort’s Maude Burke Elementary is starting the year off with two brand-new classrooms.

“Over the last couple years we’ve seen a sharp increase of students,” saidRandySteciuk, the school’s principal.

The increase of students Steciuk attributes to the increase of housing in Melfort and the closure of Broadway Community School.

In the past, the school was forced to hold classes in the library due to lack of classrooms available because of the number of students.

“So it was an opportunity for us to not have students set up in our library and we are able to house them in some classrooms,” Steciuk said. “We were able to move the students out of the library and house them in brand new classroom space in the other two classrooms.”

This school year they are starting with 209 students, plus 16 pre-kindergarten students.

The pre-kindergarten students are returning this year after they were sent to Reynolds Central School in previous years due to space issues in the school.

 “We had pre-kindergarten for a number of years, then as our enrollment increased we were in need of more classroom space, there was classroom space available at Reynolds School. So our students were moved to Reynolds School and we utilized that classroom space for our kindergarten to Grade 6 students.”

Now Maude Burke Elementary will get to have pre-kindergarten again, with one of their classrooms converted for the function.

The two new classrooms were constructed from scratch, rather than converted from previous rooms.