A new elementary school will be built in Oro-Medonte, thanks to provincial funding.
The Simcoe County District School Board has received $8.5 million for the project. The exact location for the school is yet to be determined, but it will be in the Horseshoe Valley/Craighurst area.
“A lot of growth is going to be coming to that area,” said Peter Beacock, school board chair and trustee for Oro-Medonte and Springwater.
The new school will mean changes for some students who attend W.R. Best Elementary School, which is on Old Barrie Road, south of Horseshoe Valley.
“There will be a change in the boundaries once the school is built,” Beacock said, adding “a good portion” of students in the Horseshoe Valley/Craighurst area currently attend W.R. Best.
The board had been approached by the Township of Oro-Medonte about the possibility of partnering to create more space for community activities.
“Now that we have the funding, we can sit down and have those meetings,” Beacock said.
The province is ponying up an additional $530,000 to have an EarlyON child and family room created in the new school. It is, essentially, childcare for preschool-age children, “to get them into schools and get them accustomed to schools,” Beacock explained.
The funding recently announced by the province will also see more portables at Notre Dame Catholic School in Orillia.
The Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board had identified an addition to Notre Dame as a capital priority. The province instead chose to provide $856,800 for portables.
“Our hope is that some additional funding will come at some point for us to do an addition,” said board spokesperson Pauline Stevenson. “There is definitely some growth in that community (west Orillia) and having those portables will help us address those pressures.”
