Sooke School District acquires land to meet growing student enrollment needs

The Sooke School District has acquired a 7.2-acre plot of land in North Langford to build a middle school, as enrollment within the district continues to grow.

Langford-Juan de Fuca MLA Ravi Parmar and the school district’s board chair, Amanda Dowhy, made the announcement at the Gateway Road site Monday morning.

“This land acquisition is made possible thanks to the partnership we have with the Sooke School District,” says Parmar. “It’s $25 million in total – about $21-million coming from the province of British Columbia and just under $4 million coming from the Sooke School District.”

The new piece of land is across the street from a secondary school that’s in the design process, with a fiscal plan due for provincial approval in the fall.

“This is 100 per cent positive, fantastic news,” says Langford Mayor Scott Goodmanson.

The Sooke School district figures it’ll need to be opening the doors on the new middle school site by the 2028-29 school year.

“We are one of the few districts that is growing as rapidly as we are,” says Dowhy. “So that’s always been a very interesting piece to put together to see how we can come up with innovative ways to be able to ensure that our students have quality access to education.”

Langford’s mayor says the city still ranks among the country’s fastest growing, with roughly 3,400 new residents in 2023.

“We’re in an infrastructure deficit across the board in many ways,” says Goodmanson. “I don’t think there’s any municipality in Canada anywhere that is 100 per cent keeping up with growth. The costs of everything today are just that much more.”

District 62’s superintendent says community collaboration is one of the solutions working for new school sites. He says the city has agreed to fund a turf field and lights at the new secondary school in the works – and there’s talk of partnerships for a theatre too.

“It’s a positive for government. It’s certainly a positive for the school district. And in the end it’s a win for students because we get better schools and better amenities,” says superintendent Paul Block.

Since 2017, the province says it's invested more than $270 million in the Sooke School District, making room for 2,660 new student spaces.