Deputy minister visiting Ste Anne after new school cancelled

Manitoba Deputy Minister of Education and Early Childhood Learning Brian O’Leary is set to take a tour of the packed Ste Anne school complex that houses Ste Anne Immersion, Ste Anne Elementary, and Ste Anne Collegiate on Oct. 17.

A planned new vocational high school that was to be built by September 2027 was cancelled by the new NDP government soon after it won the election last fall. The reasoning was that it wanted to move away from the P3 (public-private partnership) model that was being used for new schools by the previous PC government. P3 models use private companies to design, build, and/or maintain public infrastructure.

Seine River School Division (SRSD) interim superintendent Reg Klassen said at the Sept. 24 school board meeting that a new vocational school in Ste Anne is at the top of a long list of capital projects the division needs built soon.

Board Chair Wendy Bloomfield said the two-hour tour will hopefully give the province a better understanding of why Ste Anne needs a new school now.

“He is coming during the day when the kids are in class and in between classes because I think it’s really important that he see the overcrowding situation and the kind of chaotic situation at times,” said Bloomfield.

Ste Anne Mayor Yvan St. Vincent, who is also principal of Ste Anne Collegiate, is to be there when the deputy minister visits, according to Klassen. Board members have also been seeking a meeting with Education Minister Nello Altomare, but there is no word on when that might happen.

A 15-acre parcel of land had been bought for $1.3 million in 2022 in a residential subdivision off Caledonia Path east of the school complex. The immersion and elementary school were to fill up the space left after the high school moved to its new facility that was to have dedicated vocational programming space.

Ste Anne Collegiate is at its capacity of 400 students. The new school would have had room for up to 700 students, depending on how many classrooms are included due to growth in the area and incoming students from elsewhere in the division or from other divisions that SRSD made an agreement with. Administration had already been in talks before Klassen’s hiring with French school division DSFM (Division Scolaire Franco-Manitobaine), which has a school on the same street as the Ste Anne school complex.

Klassen told the board during its meeting that he got deputy minister O’Leary’s attention when he told him that no Ste Anne students were getting into Steinbach’s very busy vocational high school programs.

“I saw him, ‘Oh yeah.’ That was the surprise I thought, too. And I think that opens the door,” said Klassen.

“He did ask us what four vocational programs would you want. And so I think that’s a bit of a think tank that we ought to do with our principals and our board. When we think about technical vocational programs, what would we like, and how would that work?”

According to Klassen, O’Leary told him SRSD is one of the three most crowded school divisions along with Seven Oaks and Brandon.

“So that’s good leverage for us,” said Klassen.