NORTHEAST — The North East School Division is applying for portables at Melfort’s Brunswick Elementary and Nipawin’s Central Park Elementary.
The request was made to the provincial education ministry and is one that’s made annually. The ministry looks at the requests from different school boards and decides which ones need it the most.
“The way to handle increased growth in some schools is add portable classrooms,” said Don Rempel, the division's director of education.
“Around budget time in March we’ll find out if we’re going to get any or not,” Rempel said. “It would be on a wish list, not on an absolute need list at this point.”
Pre-kindergarten students from the area of Brunswick School have had to go to Reynolds Central School due to lack of space.
“We would like to have a classroom where the neighborhood kids could go to pre-kindergarten in a neighborhood school.”
Central Park has been having their own space issues.
“In Central Park in Nipawin they were able to decommission their computer room and put new technology, practices, personal devices, etc,” Rempel said. “They were able to repurpose places in the school and currently the school meets the students’ needs but we have continued growth through the last couple of years in our early learning numbers in Nipawin.”
If the ministry accepted the request, it would be on their dime. The school division could also buy its own portables, like they did with Melfort's Maude Burke Elementary.
