Tillsonburg ARC moves forward
Article content
At a meeting in late March, Trustees with the Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB) finalized a couple of decisions regarding the Tillsonburg Elementary Accommodation Review.
“On March 26 the board approved the recommendations of the senior administration, which were supported by the ARC committee,” said Kevin Bushell, executive officer, facility services and capital planning with the TVDSB. “To close Rolph Street School and to close Maple Lane Public School as of June 30, 2014, to construct a new school that’s JK to Grade 8 on Quarter Town Line, renovate Annandale Public School to a JK to Grade 8 school for September 2014 and to build an addition and renovations to make South Ridge Public School a JK to Grade 8 school for September 1, 2014.”
That night the board also approved to declare Rolph Street School surplus, which means it will eventually be put up for sale and chose to retain Maple Lane Public School for future board use said Bushell.
All changes and renovations, including the building of the new school are contingent on capital funding approval from the Ministry of Education.
In addition, there were several committees established for each of the schools involved in the Tillsonburg Elementary ARC.
“They also approved design committees for Annandale, South Ridge and the new school. Those are three different design committees which will comprise of myself, an architect, and a project coordinator from facility services, along with a principle, teacher reps and parent reps from the schools to deal with the design of those buildings,” said Bushell.
“That’s our standard format for what we do when we go through this process.”
The design committees meet every second week and have already held of couple of meetings this spring. They will continue meeting until the designs are complete.
“Right now we’ve already had discussions with the town as well, with respect to site plan approval, servicing and re-constructions of the sites administratively. We’ll still have to go through site plan process,” Bushell added noting that they are hopeful the committees will have the designs finalized by the end of June.
“We have to present our designs to the board, hopefully by the end of June, and at that meeting we present our designs, our budgets and our schedules. Then we will also be submitting for our capital priority money in May – this month, to the ministry to build these schools,” he explained.
Bushell noted that the Ministry makes every attempt to complete the approval process and release of required funds in a timely fashion, usually in late May or June and as soon as the board obtains that funding, they will move forward with tendering the projects and build them.
“We’re hopeful that we get approval of the capital money still this year, in June and then we’ll tender the projects in August and September and get the buildings done for the following year.”
There have been no other committees created at this time said Bushell, however, there will be at least two more committees to follow – a naming committee, that will include naming the new school and possibly re-naming South Ridge and Annandale schools as well. And a transition committee, that will be established closer to the completion of the new school and renovations at the existing schools.
“There will be a transition committee established later on – that doesn’t really happen until this time next year, where they start talking about moving resources, the kind of things that happen at the schools and the transition of students,” he said.
“This is exactly the schedule that we talked about in the ARC and that was presented in our report.”
Bushell said he is pleased with the progress and work that has been accomplished thus far.
“I’m really optimistic – the design committees are really working well, they’re giving us a lot of valuable input to our architect and facility services. I think we’re working well together, the town’s been very cooperative with us and helping us around all the municipal issues and servicing,” said Bushell.
“All the commitments we made to the community through the (ARC) process is unfolding as presented.”