The Langley School District acknowledged the need for a school for the Routley neighbourhood of Willoughby when the board of education approved the 2008 five-year capital plan.
The $10,250,000 elementary school was listed sixth in the district’s priorities.
Today, the school is no longer a priority.
The board came under fire at a June 27 public hearing into a plan to build 103 townhouses and a park at the spot where local residents had been led to believe, some by realtors when they bought their homes, an elementary school would be built.
If the townhouse plan is approved, the school district would relinquish Routley land at 198 Street and 70 Avenue for acreage in Yorkson where, it says, the need for a school is much greater.
A school for Routley is unlikely to materialize because of its position on the list of priorities, and the fact that Routley, a community dominated by single family homes and townhouses, is 90 per cent built. The number of children in Routley is not enough to build a school, the district has stated.
The school district’s 2008 list of projects was topped by land purchases for elementary schools in northwest Yorkson and southeast Yorkson, followed by land purchase for a secondary school for Willoughby, a land purchase for another elementary school in the Yorkson/Willowbrook area, and a $14m expansion to R.E. Mountain Secondary School.
The expansion would increase Mountain’s capacity from 725 to 1,250 students. The school currently has an overflow population in a number of portable classrooms.
At the public hearing, a resident claimed that the Routley school would be sacrificed simply to make way for a middle school.
School district spokesman Craig Spence said on June 30 that a middle school in Willoughby is the No. 1 priority, identified as such by an independent study in March, 2010.
Many Willoughby parents have told the board of education that they favour a middle school to ease overcrowding in Willoughby slope elementary schools.
A middle school “relieves enrolment pressure on elementary schools in the area,” Spence said.
The Township has earmarked two other neighbourhoods, Jericho and Latimer, for development, one of which will have little impact on local schools. In June, council approved the Jericho sub-neighbourhood plan. Entirely surrounded by the Latimer neighbourhood, Jericho will be comprised mainly of housing and amenities for seniors, and institutional uses.
These include two existing facilities, the Langley Events Centre and R.E. Mountain Secondary.
Ramin Seifi, the Township’s head of planning and interim head of the engineering department, said that the process for developing a neighbourhood plan for Latimer has just begun.
