In a unanimous vote, the Near North District School Board voted in favour of consolidating E.T. Carmichael, E.W. Norman and W.J. Fricker Public Schools, into one new build on the Fricker site located on Norman Avenue in North Bay.
The new school will accommodate just under 500 students from Junior Kindergarten to Grade 6.
"We've got to go back to the Ministry for approval, we have to put a business case together which is due September 8th, wait for their decision, which could be around Christmas time, and then if we get approved, then we have to do a template and move forward with that," explained Board Chair, Dave Thompson.
If everything goes according to plan, construction would start in September 2020. It will be the same design used to build the new Woodland Public School. Thompson says it will save time, about six months, and money. The board received just under $13 million dollars for that project.
Also at Monday night's meeting, the board passed a motion to defer making a decision on the secondary accommodation review involving Chippewa, West Ferris and Widdifield Secondary Schools. Trustees are waiting for additional information from the ministry. Its hoped a decision will be made in early fall.
"There's questions that came from the ARC recommendation. What does total modernization mean? The Ministry will only fund the cheapest option. Is it cheaper to build a new school versus renovating older schools?. Those are the questions that trustees have to find out in order to make an informed decision," explained the board chair. "If you went around at our committee meeting, it is split."
Thompson said trustees agree the board will eventually have to go to one super school, the question is do they do it now, do they do it later, and at what cost?
Michelina Beam was the only trustee to vote against the delay, telling board members she felt they needed to move forward with a decision now.
"I chaired the Capital Planning Committee, we've been at this for more than 20 months. We didn't bring that Capital plan forward lightly. There was a lot of very informed discussions at the committee level. Our staff spent months touring around, gathering information," said Beam.
She went on to say, "I didn't want to have any windows of opportunity closed with the Ministry, and I'm right now supporting a three for one because I didn't see any information come to me, that convinced me that any of the information was actually based in fact."
The board also dealt with the issue of a new school for Parry Sound. It's taken three years to get to this point, but it finally approved a new Junior Kindergarten to Grade 12 school to be built on the current high school site.
"One of our options was to build this new school on the track and field, and if we had done that, there would be a whole student generation without a track and field for four years, so we decided not to do that and go with the option of building behind the current school. It's going to be tight but our architect tells us we can do it," said Thompson.
The design will be based on enrollment and the uniqueness of having an elementary school and high school in one building, in addition to administration offices which are not funded through the new school. Work on this project will also start in 2020.
