With overcrowded schools and construction still years away, families in Vancouver’s Olympic Village gathered Saturday to demand urgent action on a long-promised neighbourhood school.
Around 100 parents and children assembled in the morning at Hinge Park, the designated site for the school, urging the city to approve rezoning and pressing the province to accelerate construction.
“A school was promised when Olympic Village was built, yet all we’ve seen are shifting timelines,” said rally organizer Sarah Pawliuk, whose daughter has just started kindergarten. The school is urgently needed to relieve the severe overcrowding already straining every nearby school—a crisis that will only get worse as the Broadway Plan brings thousands of new families to the area.
Currently, families living in Olympic Village must send their children to Simon Fraser Elementary, a 25-minute walk away. The school was operating at nearly 180 per cent capacity last year, according to school board statistics. Children who don’t get a spot through the school’s lottery system are forced to attend schools even farther away.
The Saturday demonstration comes before a Vancouver city council vote on rezoning the Hinge Park site, which has been earmarked for a community school since 2007 under the city’s Southeast False Creek development plan.
The original plan called for a three-storey school with space for 300 students. The current rezoning proposal would allow a four-storey building with capacity for 630 students, a rooftop play area, and a neighbourhood learning centre with child care for 60 school-age children.
While the application moves forward, some nearby residents have raised concerns about the building’s proposed height and its impact on the surrounding area. But parents gathered Saturday said those concerns shouldn’t outweigh the pressing need for a neighbourhood school.
“It’s shocking that we still don’t have a school in this vibrant, rapidly growing neighbourhood,” said Suzanne Ma, who moved to Olympic Village in 2013. More than a decade later, her son is in Grade 2 and her daughter is set to start kindergarten next year.
“When children are scattered across the city, our community breaks apart. Either families move away or spend hours driving to distant schools,” Ma said.
In 2022, the Vancouver School Board signed a 99-year lease for the site, two years after the provincial NDP government pledged to fast-track the project. Although the province committed $150 million in funding last year, construction is not set to begin until 2027. The school isn’t expected to open until September 2029.
It’s a timeline some local parents say is far too late for a neighbourhood that has already waited more than 15 years.
“It’s been broken promise after broken promise,” said Ma. “While we welcome the funding assurances and planning steps, we must hold elected officials accountable so we can see real construction start. Our community has waited long enough.”
— With files from Dan Fumano
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https://ca.news.yahoo.com/broken-promise-broken-promise-olympic-235429708.html
