Overcrowded Sage Creek School pushes province for portable classrooms months after opening

​Koren Ramos feels sorry for parents who attended a meeting at Sage Creek School Thursday night, hoping their kids will be students at the neighbourhood school.

"There was a woman sitting in front of me who was pregnant, and I'm like, 'Oh my God, I feel so bad for her,'" said Ramos. "To be told that you have to line up like Black Friday at Walmart to get in, that's gotta be so stressful."

When the kindergarten to Grade 8 school opened its doors in September, it already had 630 children in a facility designed for 600. The meeting in the packed school gym on Thursday was hosted by the Louis Riel School Division to provide information about the overpopulation problem.

Acting superintendent Christian Michalik, who led the meeting, said it didn't come as a surprise for school division officials.

"Already over capacity, knew we would be, had communicated that to government from the start. We're where we expected to be when we first projected in 2007," he said.

In an effort to delay having to bus students out of the community for a couple of years, the school division says it has asked for four portable classrooms. So far, the province has refused their requests, Michalik said.

"It's important to note there are approximately 500 vacant spaces in nearby schools," a spokesperson for Education Minister Ian Wishart wrote in an email statement.

"The capacity of Sage Creek School was based on student projections from the school division in advance of the design, and over the past few years, the area has continued to grow."

The design of the school was increased from 450 to 600 students to reflect increasing enrolment, the spokesperson said.

Parents feel misled

Parents of children in École Sage Creek School said they feel misled after hearing officials have known for at least a decade that a second school would be needed to accommodate the number of kids in the neighbourhood.

"For me, it's the fact that the school division, in January 2018, is now coming to the community and saying, 'Hey we have a problem,' when they could have done this for the last seven to 10 years," said Jay Myshkowsky, whose two sons already go to the school.

The plan had been to have two schools, each with capacity for 600 students, Michalik said. The division has been asking the provincial government for a second school since at least 2013.

École Sage Creek School is the first new school to open in Louis Riel School Division in 20 years.

Ramos said she would feel "duped" if she had purchased a house in the neighbourhood without being told that the school would be over capacity. She plans to write letters to her government representatives to push them to build a second school.

The school division will hold off moving kids to other schools as long as possible, but it is "inevitable" without portable classrooms and ultimately a new school, Michalik said.

Once the school establishes enrolment limits, the priority will be to keep siblings in the same school, he said.