As parents and students were notified at the end of the 2024-25 school year, the new Rainy River K-12 school will not be ready for students to begin next week when school resumes.
Heather Campbell, the Director of Education for the Rainy River District School Board, says the delays in construction were unavoidable.
“Construction has progressed steadily and it remains on budget,” Campbell said.
“But the timeline for full occupancy has shifted due to the availability of trades and the supply chain issues I think every construction project has seen across Ontario and Canada.”
Rainy River High School and Riverview Public School serve the west end of the Rainy River District, including parts of Barwick, Stratton, Chapple, Morley and Big Island and Big Grassy River First Nations.
Campbell says while work is progressing, the decision to occupy the older buildings was made last spring.
“They’re still working through the final stages of interior work,” she said.
“Of course there’s always safety inspections, so it’s ongoing work. We’ve been monitoring it all summer and there has been substantial work done, it won’t be ready for September, and we foresaw that back in late April. We made the call as we had promised staff we would give them advanced notice so they knew whether to pack up or not.”
The school community, teachers, staff, parents and the Town of Rainy River were all notified that the new building wouldn’t be ready for occupation by the start of the new school year in May.
When students are able to get into the new school there are many features to look forward to, Campbell says.
“I was in there [last week], Minister Rickford was down, and we did a tour of the building. And it’s so beautiful. It’s a really well-designed school,” Campbell said.
“We have not only a beautiful, large gym, but it’s also been designed so that it can be very flexible in space, because we know that we have Kindergarten to Grade 12. So for instance, we have the large gym, but we also have a full stage that can be cordoned off with sound proof folding doors that allow for music instruction to occur if there needs to be a classroom there, and also the classroom on the stage has another partition that opens up into sort of a gathering area on the other side that’s sort of into the hallway where people can gather. There could be, say, high school phys. ed. going on in the gym, and then a presentation going on for younger kids in that sort of gathering area.”
The student body will number somewhere between 250-300 students once complete, with separate wings for elementary students and high school students.
“We have the EarlyOn and daycare centre, which is a 39-place childcare centre with an EarlyOn Child and Family Centre, and then right beside it is the kindergarten playground or the kindergarten room,” Campbell said.
“So it really, really works well, as far as one side of the school is elementary and the other side is secondary, and then the common spaces are in the middle.”
The central hub of the school includes the library and other common spaces.
The new school also has a new bathroom layout which Campbell says is gender inclusive which has been put in place across the District’s schools over the course of recent new builds and renovations. The bathrooms have floor to ceiling stalls which allow for privacy and then handwashing stations outside, allowing for sightlines to ensure safety and supervision.
As they finish with construction, Campbell says she’s happy that the other schools are still in working order.
“It’s really a gift to have a separate site, nearby but nonetheless doesn’t disrupt the startup of school for K-12 students at Riverview and Rainy River High,” she said.
“So it’s really an ideal situation.”
The hope is to be able to move students into the new building as soon as possible while having as little disruption to the school year as possible. This may mean doing the move around Christmas or Spring Break, depending on what kind of accommodations can be made.
“Everyone was so impressed on the tour [last week], (we’re) just looking forward to its completion,” Campbell added
“But again, we know that moving into a new school, that’s a lot of work, so we want to make sure that we would give that time to not only the staff, but just to allow for everything to be in place.”
