Progress continues on a pair of new schools in Windsor-Essex expected to be open to students in the fall.
The Greater Essex County District School Board purchased land to develop a new Kindergarten to Grade 12 school in Kingsville, which will replace Kingsville District High School, Kingsville Public School and Jack Miner Public School.
The school board is also building a new school in Tecumseh, which will replace the current D.M. Eagle Public School and serve students from Kindergarten to Grade 8 within the Tecumseh and Lakeshore areas.
Speaking on AM800's The Shift, Superintendent of Education Todd Awender provided an update on where things stand.
Awender says he's at the new build in Tecumseh nearly every week.
"Looking at the construction, how it's coming along. We're meeting with administration from different schools, the construction companies, our facility services that will be involved as well. But all is going well, and we're looking forward to it opening come September."
The new school in Tecumseh will offer a fresh learning environment, with 651 new student spaces, 73 new childcare spaces, along with four new childcare rooms.
Awender says D.M. Eagle is an older building with a number of additions put on over the years, so they're very excited to get students into the new space.
"With your libraries, your gyms, your music room. Rooms that have students with exceptionalities, just lobbies and open spaces in the hallways for common learning among different classrooms. And even same grade levels but bringing two classrooms together to do presentations and so fourth."
It's tentatively known as the New North Shore School, but Awender says a long process will be undertaken to come up with the official name.
In Kingsville, Awender says it's coming along great and anyone who has been by it would back that up.
He says the process is going back about eight years now, and there's been a significant increase in the prices of certain things which has had an impact.
"As well as some labour shortages with regards to the trades, and so we did have to go back to the Ministry of Education. That $45 million, the Ministry was generous in giving us another basically $16 million to now make the school about a $60 million project approximately."
Awender explained how things will work, noting that the Kingsville Public K-8 school and Jack Miner K-8 school are combining together to form the K-8 portion of the new school.
"And then the high school students that are currently at Kingsville district, other than the Grade 12s that are going to graduate, the Grade 8s coming up from the elementary schools as well as the now Grade 9, 10 and 11s will make up the high school portion of our K-12."
He says an added bonus is Harrow Public is going to be a feeder school, so Grade 8 students graduating there will now go into the new K-12 school in Kingsville as a Grade 9 student.
Both schools are expected to be open this September.
- with files from AM800's The Shift