Funding has been announced for a new elementary school planned in Willoughby.
The $32.2 million project will see $28.7 million in funding coming from the province and $3.5 million from the Langley School District.
To be built near 205th Street and 78th Avenue, the new school’s site was purchased and announced last summer.
The Grades K through 5 school will have 555 student spaces when built.
It is expected to be finished and open by September 2021. The district is hoping to announce a date for the start of construction soon.
“We have been advocating for this school to be opened to relieve the pressure on the [Willoughby] Slope,” said Megan Dykeman, chair of the Langley School Board.
The project will also include new child care spaces, 83 spaces in three classrooms.
This is the latest project announced to build more schools in fast-growing Willoughby, where many portables dot the grounds of nearby elementary schools such as Willoughby and R.C. Garnett.
Dykeman said the hope is that adding another school, approximately the same size a Lynn Fripps, Willoughby and Richard Bulpitt Elementaries, will help reduce the need for portables at other schools. It was too early for Dykeman to comment on how many portables it might remove.
Several new elementary schools have been built in the last decade, and this September the first new high school to be built in Langley in years will open as R.E. Mountain transfers to a new and larger facility. R.E. Mountain was expanded during the early stages of construction to accommodate more students.
READ MORE: Eight classrooms added to R.E. Mountain
The old R.E. Mountain building will be converted into Peter Ewart Middle School.
READ MORE: New middle school named for Langley artist, music school founder
