Quesnel’s Board of Education has had a look at the Project Definition Report on a possible replacement for Quesnel Junior School.
As School District Superintendent Sue-Ellen Miller explains, it looks at three potential options…
“One of the options is to renovate the old QJS building at the downtown site, so that’s one option that the Ministry asked us to explore. The second is using the present QJS school at the Maple Drive site and building an addition as that school isn’t large enough for the number of students that are presently in it, and the number of students that would be in it in the future. And then the third option would be to build a brand new school for 500 plus students at the current QJS site, so the Maple Drive site.”
Miller says this process is necessary to see how realistic these options are…
“It’s taking a look at what it would take to bring systems to where they would need to be or making changes within the building say to bathrooms, and you really don’t know how realistic it is until you actually do this work. It’s not unlike the seismic work on the Lower Mainland. They do a lot of upgrading work throughout the province so I think that’s, when we look at these three options we think option one, is probably really unrealistic to renovate the old QJS building, but option two to do a renovation to the Maple Drive building is more realistic, and then of course, the best option, which is what we want for our community is a new school.”
Miller says work will be done over the holidays to cost out each of these options and that information will then be released at the January Board meeting.
She hopes that a final decision will be made by the province in the spring.