Riverview East School overcrowded 3 years after opening

Moncton, Riverview and Dieppe continue to buck the trend of declining school enrolment in the province with portables expected to be installed this fall at Riverview East, a kindergarten to Grade 8 school that opened just three years ago.

The school is already overcrowded with enrolment closing in on the 650 students it was designed to accommodate, says Gregg Ingersoll, the superintendent of the Anglophone East School District.

"Even if the school is built for 650, depending on how the classes line up and how many kids are in each class, you can actually reach the capacity of the school before we hit that number," he told Information Morning Moncton.

Not roomy from the start

Ingersoll said enrolment continues to increase at the school, which has been tight for space since it opened in 2014.

"Now with the addition of the Grade 1 French immersion next year at the school it's pushing us into spaces in the school that weren't designed for homerooms ... and we have one more year of early French immersion coming next year,"  he said.

"And we're definitely going to be at a point where we're going to need some more space."

Ingersoll said 650 is considered an "optimal size" for a K to 8 school, but it is time now to bring in portable classrooms.

Portables take playground space

Riverview East is using windowless music rooms and labs as homeroom classrooms, and Ingersoll said there is simply nowhere to put another class unless portables are added in time for the new school year in September.

The growth in those areas ... it's really bucking the trend in New Brunswick. Most places the enrolment is declining but in those areas it's growing at such a rate that you almost can't keep up with it.- Gregg Ingersoll, Anglophone East superintendent

"Those classes were not designed to be homeroom classes," he said.

"We were in a very similar situation in Northrop Frye and we're still in that situation actually in the north end where schools have no choice but to utilise other spaces until something else happens."

Northrop Frye School has six portable classrooms as students wait for a new school to be built in the north end of Moncton.

In January the Department of Education announced $1.4 million for the planning phase of the new middle school, which is intended to alleviate overcrowding at Northrop Frye and Evergreen Park schools.

• Moncton DEC votes for new middle school for north end

Ingersoll said enrolment numbers for Riverview East look stable for the next couple of years, but there is a lot of room for development in the area and "anything could happen."

Portables will have to be brought in, even though there will be consequences for outdoor space, he said.

"One of the issues at Riverview East is where you're going to put the portables because of the way the school is on its property — there isn't a lot of room in any direction ... to put the portables without taking up some playground space."

Schools designed for expansion

Ingersoll is asking the Department of Education to fund a two-storey addition to Riverview East School as part of the major capital projects budget.

He said when new schools are designed there is always an option to add more classrooms if necessary.

"We're just asking them to add additional classrooms and I believe that in the original concept there was a spot where they could have added six additional classrooms to the school," he said.

Ingersoll points to Evergreen Park, which was built in 1995 and had an addition just two years later because of higher enrolment, as another example of what the Moncton area is seeing.

Hard to keep up

"The growth in those areas — the north end of Moncton or Riverview or the east end of Moncton — it's really bucking the trend in New Brunswick. Most places the enrolment is declining but in those areas it's growing at such a rate that you almost can't keep up with it."

Ingersoll is also requesting upgrades to Riverview High School, where renovations have just been completed to add space for vocational programs.

"We're saying that with a little bit more upgrades, that school will be ready to go for another 25 years — so there's just a few things left to do there so ... why don't we continue that work and get it finished and then that school will be off our list."