Shovels in the ground at new Harbour Landing School site after years of demand

Construction is officially underway on a long-awaited and much-needed elementary school in Regina’s Harbour Landing.

Parents have been pushing for a new school in the neighbourhood for years, saying schools in the city’s south end are bursting at the seams.

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Adam Hicks, board chair for Regina Public Schools, said around 400 students in Harbour Landing are bused to schools outside of their own neighbourhood, and that’s been the case for several years.

“My daughter goes to A.E. Perry School, so she has seen that school grow from 300 kids to almost 600 kids now, and that has actually pushed our boundaries into Argyle and other schools as well,” Hicks explained.

He said the new school will help take some pressure off other schools in the city’s south end.

“Argyle, Perry, Milliken will have the pressure relieved off of them. (It will) allow those teachers a little more room and flexibility with the teaching spaces, including music rooms and art rooms and things like that, and allow those students back in this community to get back into a community school, back in their own home,” Hicks said.

The joint-use school is expected to have space for around 500 public students and 350 Catholic students, along with 90 new child-care spaces.

Hicks said he expects the school to fill up quickly once it opens.

“I don’t want to make guesses, but it will be near capacity or a little bit over capacity, so we will be maxing it out around that 500-student mark,” he said.

“This area continues to grow. It is one of the highest growing demographic areas in this entire province – this community specifically – and so this school will relieve a lot of burden off of that high-intense growth and the high density of families that live in this community as well.”

Back in 2020, the Government of Saskatchewan added funding for a new school in the provincial budget.

It wasn’t until last year when shovels hit the ground for roadworks and utility connections on the school site on the corner of Gordon Road and Campbell Street in preparation for the construction of the school.

At that time, the new joint-use school was expected to open in 2026, but that date has since been pushed back to 2027.

Education Minister Everett Hindley acknowledged the delays in getting the project going.

“It’s not a normal timeline,” Hindley said. “This one has taken a little bit longer, I think, to get to today’s stage where we actually see construction happening behind us.”

Education Minister Everett Hindley said a big reason for the delay in getting the new school project underway in Harbour Landing was ensuring it could accommodate as many families as possible. (Lisa Schick/980 CJME)

He said efforts to get the site right, including determining the size of the school in order to accommodate as many families as possible, contributed to the delays.

“(We were) trying to get it handled and working very closely with the City of Regina and our partners at both the Regina Public and Regina Catholic school divisions around what was happening for development in this area, trying as best as we can collaboratively to predict the growth in this part of Regina and what that would look like on the education system,” Hindley said.

The education minister said the provincial government learned some lessons along the way that could help projects get off the ground faster in the future.

Hindley said the total capital cost on the new joint-use school in Harbour Landing added up to $65.9 million, with the City of Regina forking over $4 million towards the land purchase, site servicing and community space, as well as waiving site servicing fees, which were valued at around $1.3 million.

–with files from 980 CJME’s Lisa Schick