The Prairie South and Holy Trinity Catholic School Divisions recently held a second public input meeting for the construction of the new 1,000-plus student facility, this time seeking suggestions on which of four sites was most preferable.
All four areas – located at Westmount School, Smith Park, Coteau Street/Wellington Drive and Currie Heights South – were revealed during the meeting, with the goal of drawing comments with regards to pros and cons of each area.
Holy Trinity director of education Sean Chase said the two divisions worked with the City of Moose Jaw and the Ministry of Education to identify multiple sites before narrowing down to the four presented at the meeting.
“There were many items to consider as we tried to present there, the size of land being one of them, the accessibility of the landas well as safety considerations were top of mind for us,’ Chase said. “We had already heard that, but the people at the Ministry of Education know what they’re doing, they were very good at helping us vet even down to where we are tonight.”
The meeting drew around 100 people, with organizers tasking each table of four or five individuals with what they thought was best and what was least attractive about each site, an opportunity that drew plenty of constructive discussions.
“It absolutely affirmed what we heard March 28 from many families that came out that evening,” Chase said. “People are excited about the announcement, they’re celebrating the announcement and they want to make sure this is a legacy project. . . This is the first new school in Moose Jaw in over three decades by the time it’s built, so we want to make sure we get it right and leave a lasting legacy that meets as many of the check-boxes as we can.”
Prior to the meeting, members of both divisions visited other joint use schools in the province – specifically in Regina and Swift Current – with the goal of evaluating how they’re used and what ideas could be transferred to Moose Jaw.
That led to the selection of possible sites and the needs and amenities of each.
The Westmount site is centrally located to the four schools being consolidated and is situated on a large parcel of land. But building the school there would take out several ball diamonds, which would affect City programming as well as landscape infrastructure that would need replacement.
The Smith Field site is located adjacent to Sacred Heart School and also features over 13 acres of land to build on, but would remove a heavily used soccer facility as well as require a phased construction approach to build while Sacred Heart remains in operation.
The Coteau South West site is a completely open 16-acre tract of land that is ready for utility service, but is on the edge of the city, adjacent to the CP railyard and would require a land transfer from the City of Moose Jaw.
Currie Heights South is the largest and most open of all the sites, as it’s located in a current farm field. But the site falls out of the city boundaries, has no city services and would require annexation from the rural municipality.
Chase and his fellow committee members were impressed with what they heard from those who took part.
“I heard lots of engagement from families who have done a lot of consideration before even arriving tonight, which is positive from our side,” he said. “Many had done their homework in advance and thought through some of these things, lots spoke already of having walked the streets and said ‘this is a narrow street, this could be a concern’. That level of engagement was exactly what we were hoping to hear tonight because obviously we’ve taken our own steps and have some thoughts we’ve created and we wanted to hear matching thoughts from our stakeholders.”
The committee plans to look at the comments on each site closely and make a decision with other parties. When the decision will officially be made is up in the air, as a deliberate approach has been the plan since day one of the project. As such, site selection will be carefully performed, as will each step of the project going forward, which makes selecting a concrete date for each step difficult.
“There’s excitement and there’s also need,” Chase said. “One of the things we discussed at the steering committee level is getting through the site selection, establishing a firm opening date in consultation with the project manager we’ve selected.
“What that enables us to do as administration and boards of education is say ‘here are the pressing needs for infrastructure in our four existing schools lets address those so they’re safe and viable schools until the opening of the new one and then move forward’… we believe it’s better to keep some of those schools open and viable (for the time being) rather than rush this decision knowing how many tax dollars go into it and how it’s going to last us multiple generations.”
