More than 200 suggestions for the name of the Sooke School District’s next elementary school have been received, and more are welcome.
The Sooke School Board is gathering name suggestions for the school in south Langford through Thought Exchange, an online platform, until Jan. 31.
The board will also consult with its Indigenous communities. An open house will beheld at Happy Valley Elementary on Feb. 15 to share the top suggestions and a name will be chosen in March.
“Preserving and revitalizing Indigenous languages is one of the calls to action in the Truth and Reconciliation report,” said school board chairman Ravi Parmar.
“Whenever we can, we must consider how we can help move the calls to action forward and that is why hearing from our local Indigenous Nations is an important part of this process.”
The civil contract to build the school has been awarded to West Shore-based Draycor Construction Ltd. Levelling and grading work has begun and construction is scheduled to begin this spring.
The school is due to open in the fall of 2025 with space for 480 students, and will include a neighbourhood learning centre with community programming, as well as child-care space.
“Families in south Langford are only a few short years away from having a new elementary school in their neighbourhood,” Parmar said.
District superintendent Scott Stinson said the population of the south Latoria and Happy Valley neighbourhoods continues to grow, and another elementary school will address immediate capacity needs.
“Since I took on this role in 2018, we have grown by roughly 2,000 new students, and we need to continue to build new schools to account for the region’s growing population,” Stinson said.
About 600 new students came to the district in September 2022 following a record increase of 800 in 2021, bringing the district total to more than 12,000.
Funding of $39.6 million for the new south Langford school, to be located near the corner of Latoria Road and Klahanie Drive, was announced last June.
Two more elementary schools in the area of Bear Mountain and Royal Bay are also in the district’s capital plan, and a site is in place for a future secondary on McCallum Road, near Costco.
A similar naming procedure was used for two district schools opened last year — PEXSISEN Elementary School (pronounced pux-see-sung and meaning “the opening of hands” in the Songhees language) and Centre Mountain Lellum Middle School (with the name Lellum gifted to the district by Chief Russ Chipps of the Beecher Bay Nation and meaning “house and the idea of community, where we raise our children”).
