The replacement to Mission Secondary School has its funding, but a long process awaits before students can attend classes there.
The earliest the new school could open is 2027, according to the agenda for Tuesday’s (April 18) Board of Education meeting. With a longer process, the school could open in September 2030 or later.
Initial estimates for the cost of the replacement sit in excess of $100 million with the school designed to accommodate 1,500 students. Funding is allocated for the project by the province, but not yet approved.
Mission Public Schools is waiting on approval from the Ministry of Education to expedite the process and advance directly to the project development report stage.
The replacement school is currently in the preplanning stage, the first of six in the process, and the next stage is ministry funding approval.
Advancing directly to the project development report and filing the it to the Ministry by August 31 could speed up the process by a year, with funding approval potentially coming by March 2024.
If the Ministry doesn’t allow the district to proceed directly to the report, staff would need to update the concepts plan and funding approval would likely come in March 2025.
According to the agenda, there’s a four to six year timeline for the school to be completed once funding is approved. One year is estimated for planning to go along with three to five years for design and construction.
Mission MLAs Pam Alexis and Bob D’Eith announced the allocation of funding for the new secondary school on March 10 after the district had applied for several years.
After preplanning and ministry funding approval, the next stages in the process are design requirements, construction, demolition and site works.
Three different processes for the project are currently being considered: construction management, design bid build and design build.
“Ministry staff are certainly leaning toward the design build method, as this tends to limit the risk to the Ministry and the school district,” the agenda reads.
According to the agenda, the design build method is best for large-scale projects seeking innovative and expedited program delivery, with benefits including quicker occupancy, cost certainty, and risk transfer.
READ MORE: Funding in place to build new Mission Secondary School
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