Families at a Saint John francophone school are calling on the province to fast-track expansion plans.
Centre scolaire Samuel-de-Champlain has been dealing with overcrowding for a number of years.
The Francophone School District Education Council has been advocating for an expansion since 2016.
However, the project has yet to be approved by the province, and parents say the situation continues to worsen.
“Every hallway, storage room, and even washrooms have been converted into makeshift learning spaces – and our children deserve better,” parent spokesperson Alain Fournier said in a news release.
“Our families and students can no longer wait for action, and we are seeking the start of an expansion process by December 2025.”
School overcapacity by hundreds of students
Fournier told our newsroom that enrolment currently exceeds existing capacity by more than 225 students – some of those learning in portable classrooms.
He said projections show the number of portable classrooms at the school is expected to double in the next four years.
“At one point, we’ll run out of space in the parking lot to put some classrooms outside of the building,” Fournier added.
The situation is so bad, said Fournier, that an average of 23 per cent of Grade 8 students are leaving the school for anglophone district schools.
The district has warned of deteriorating conditions and accelerated assimilation of languages – issues parents and students are worried will get worse if an expansion does not happen soon.
New schools being studied
In December’s capital budget, the province announced it would look at building new francophone schools in the Sussex-Hampton and the St. Stephen-St. George areas to help address overcrowding.
It came weeks after the school district filed a lawsuit against the province over years of delays in school infrastructure investments.
Fournier, however, does not believe that additional schools in those areas will help the situation at Samuel-de-Champlain.
“The problem will still exist because those two locations already have a domain for those students in those regions,” he added.
Parents and students hosted an open house on Thursday night and built a school out of LEGO blocks to demonstrate the scale of the situation.
Expansion 9th on provincial list
New Brunswick’s education department uses an analysis tool to establish the priority ranking for school infrastructure projects in the province. The highest ranking of the projects makes up the department’s Stable Departmental Infrastructure Priorities list.
Government spokesperson Bruce Macfarlane said the mid-life upgrade and addition at Samuel-de-Champlain is currently ninth on that list.
“Once a project is on this list, it will not be removed until it is funded in sequential order,” Macfarlane told our newsroom in an email.
“We understand the concerns raised by families and educators and are aware of the challenges the lack of space poses. There are various high-priority competing needs across the province, and we need to work within our budgetary and human resources.”
Macfarlane added that it is the government’s priority to provide all students in the province with safe learning spaces where they can thrive.
