Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

$25M Royal Bay Secondary expansion to make room for 600 students

Construction is set to begin this month on a $25.2-million expansion to create space for 600 students at Royal Bay Secondary — even though the school is less than four years old. The expansion is expected to be ready for the 2020-2021 school year.
a1-0109-portables-clr.jpg
A soccer team practises on the field next to Royal Bay Secondary school, with its 10 portables nearby. The school has almost 1,000 students.

Construction is set to begin this month on a $25.2-million expansion to create space for 600 students at Royal Bay Secondary — even though the school is less than four years old.

The expansion is expected to be ready for the 2020-2021 school year. The 800-seat school has close to 1,000 students now.

“It’s going to end up being the largest secondary school on the Island,” said Sooke school board chairman Ravi Parmar. “It will be a 1,400-seat capacity when it’s done.”

Royal Bay and a new Belmont Secondary were opened in the Sooke school district in September 2015. By 2016, Royal Bay was full and using portables.

“It’s not every day that you can open a new school and two, three years later have 10 portables sitting outside,” Parmar said.

“We’re very excited about moving forward.”

The Sooke school district is the fastest-growing per capita in B.C., he said. It is expected to increase by 300 to 400 students each year for the next decade.

Parmar said the school board tried to tell the B.C. Liberal government, which was in power when the two secondary schools were built, that the planned size of Royal Bay was too small.

“We made the case to the previous government that as soon as you open this school at 800, it’s going to be full, and we were right.”

The need for more capacity has been accelerated by the pace of development around Royal Bay. In 2017, former district superintendent Jim Cambridge said the rate of residential construction in the area was “exponentially” faster than expected.

District officials responded by taking preliminary steps in April 2017 to expand Royal Bay.

Parmar said original plans called for a 400-seat expansion but 600 was later determined to be the appropriate number. Knappett Projects is the contractor.

Education Minister Rob Fleming said he is happy to see the project about to start so that more students can learn in “positive, healthy spaces” rather than in portables.

“We’ve got to work quickly with the Sooke school district to support Royal Bay and other projects in the fast-growing community, and we’ll continue working together to improve schools for students,” Fleming said in a statement.

The district has also cleared a site for two prospective facilities — an elementary school and a middle school — on a 6.5-hectare parcel in the Westhills area. The land was bought with $23.3 million in provincial government funding in December 2017.

jwbell@timescolonist.com