Grants sought for additions at growing Lambton public schools

The Lambton-Kent area’s public school board is seeking more provincial funding to expand elementary schools.

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Applications for capital priorities grants, via the Education Ministry, have gone in for four more classrooms at Grand Bend school, and three more classrooms at Plympton-Wyoming school, said Brian McKay, associate director with the Lambton Kent District school board.

Each school currently uses two laptops, he said, noting the respective $2.4-million and $2.8-million expansion proposals are based on projections the schools each will hit about 135 per cent capacity within 10 years.

They’re currently operating around 110 and 115 per cent capacity, he said.

Grand Bend has between 270 and 280 students, and is built for 250, McKay said.

Plympton-Wyoming — consolidated in 2018 from the former Wyoming and South Plympton schools, with a $6-million expansion at the former Wyoming site — has space for 257 and a current pupil count of 303, he said.

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Plympton-Wyoming and Grand Bend are high growth areas on the board, he said. “You can kind of see geographically where the families and where the development is happening.”

Errol Village elementary school in Plympton-Wyoming, near Camlachie, is in the midst of provincially funded $6.1-million expansionadding two new classrooms and a three-room independent child-care hub.

Construction is expected to finish by spring, McKay said. The school, built in to house 190 pupils in the 1960s and ’70s, now is approaching 260 pupils.

An answer from the ministry about grants to expand Grand Bend and Plympton-Wyoming school also is expected in the spring, McKay said, with hopes to have both additions built by the end of 2025.

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Elsewhere in the board, that for years experienced evolving enrolmentthings are more steady, McKay said.

Projections are for “near level or just slight growth over the next five to 10 years. . . for the board as a whole,” he said.

Recently pupil accommodation report from Watson & Associates Economists Ltd. notes the board’s overall student population grew 1.5 per cent in the last year, reaching 22,262 in Oct. 2023.

The same report notes moderate overall population growth in Lambton-Kent, but fewer children as a percentage of that population.

That and a provincial moratorium on school closings since 2017, mean a long-standing plan for a new school in Sarnia’s Sherwood Village neighborhood is still idling, McKay said.

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The board owns land there, to build a 404-pupil facility, but can’t get ministry approval while students are bussed to other schools that aren’t at capacity, he said.

“Building a school in Sherwood. . . would basically take a lot of students out of other schools,” and require a review and looking at potential consolidations, he said.

That’s not allowed under the current moratorium, he said, though building in Sherwood is a priority if the board ever gets approval because of how far students in that neighborhood are busy.

“It goes back to when I was a student at the Lambton board,” McKay said.

Overall, board elementary schools are 78 per cent full, and high schools are 66 per cent full, the Watson and Associates report says.

Those are expected to reach 82 per cent and 67 per cent respectively within five years, and 85 per cent and 70 per cent within 10 years, it says.

The school board also is working on a new 10-year capital plan, McKay said, expected to come to trustees by February.

“Definitely our capital plan, as we look at all of our schools and where we’re spending our capital dollars, it’s all tied in and all related,” he said.

Annual capital spending at the board level is on things like school upkeep, he said, while provincial grant funding is required for school expansions.

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