The Ministry of Education recently announced $10.25 million in provincial funding earmarked for the construction of a replacement school to house students from two south Etobicoke Catholic schools.
The new elementary school will consolidate Christ the King Catholic School and St. Teresa Catholic School on a site on Colonel Samuel Smith Park Drive (Lake Shore Boulevard West and Kipling Avenue), near Father John Redmond Catholic Secondary School and Regional Arts Centre.Angelo Sangiorgio, the Toronto Catholic District School Board's associate director of Planning and Facilities, said if everything goes smoothly, the 536-pupil school will be complete in less than three years."We're appointing the architect and consulting team at the August board meeting, so it depends on how long it takes them to strike a design committee and get it approved at the city, but that process normally takes about 12 months," he said. "And then the construction period is typically 12 to 15 months, so assuming everything goes really well, it'll take two and a half years before completion."In a statement released on Friday, June 17, TCDSB Chair Ann Andrachuk said the board is "very happy" with the province's response to their urgent capital needs, and thanked Etobicoke-Lakeshore MPP Laurel Broten for recognizing the benefits of a new school for a growing community."Our students deserve to have safe and welcoming school environments in which to learn and grow," she said. "Yesterday's funding announcement will help us to move forward with our long-term capital plan."According to that plan, which came out of a recent Accommodation Review process that wrapped up at the end of 2009, once the replacement school is completed, St. Josaphat Catholic School will be relocated to the current St. Teresa site at 110 Tenth Street. "St. Teresa will become the home of St. Josephat, which is currently occupying the old Brother Edmund Rice Secondary School building," Sangiorgio explained. "That community will be moving down to south Etobicoke, closer to where a large segment of their population lives...and that would, in turn, make Brother Edmund Rice available for the board to dispose of in the same way as Christ the King."The new Christ the King replacement school is just one of the many projects across Ontario coming from the provincial government's influx of more than $650 million in support of capital projects at the local school level - an investment Broten said she's very proud of. "I have been very supportive of this project and am delighted that this new school will address the needs of local families," she said in a statement. The new school in Etobicoke-Lakeshore will be added to the ambitious capital plan the TCDSB has already undertaken, including the construction of six new schools and 16 school additions.