Peggy Revell
Preliminary plans are in the works for a new school in Mine Centre.
“Mine Centre has been a long time without a new school,” noted Jack McMaster, director of education for the Rainy River District School Board.
“And this is another opportunity for ourselves, as a board, to build a new facility and also to present a new facility to the students and families living out in that region,” he added.
Mine Centre was amalgamated into the Rainy River District School Board effective Sept. 1 of this year, and McMaster said the board was told the school had been declared “prohibitive to repair.”
That means that in its current state, the cost of repairing it would surpass other alternatives.
A few decades old, Mine Centre School “wasn’t really built out of bricks and mortar,” said McMaster, noting it’s almost a modular-type of building that doesn’t last as long as the more solid type.
As of yet, though, the Ministry of Education hasn’t given the go-ahead and funding for a new school there.
“What we’re trying to do, because we’re building Robert Moore at the same time and we have an architect [Ian Hill of Evans Bertrand Hill Wheeler Inc.] who travels through the area, we are just trying to piggy-back off of the Robert Moore project,” explained McMaster, citing an analogy of a sprinter getting limbered up before a race.
“We’re trying to get ourselves down in the block so that when the ministry gives us the go-ahead, we’re able to fly out and start the process,” he remarked.
“It’s pretty exciting because we’ve been on the ‘prohibitive to repair’ list for some time,” said Mine Centre School principal Brenda Ferris-Hyatt. “And so now we’re looking forward to this.”
The school isn’t run down and custodians have done an excellent job maintaining it over the years, she added, though admitting there definitely are some areas that need improvement.
Ferris-Hyatt is looking forward to upgrades to the school’s hydro since it’s currently electric heat, as well as upgrades to the school’s looks and, hopefully, more windows.
“The offices are within the middle of the school, so for safety reasons it will be nice to have the offices at the entrance way,” she said.
As well, the architect has a plan for a gym that includes a stage—something the school has never had before, but always been talked about, Ferris-Hyatt said.
“We’ve had one meeting with our architect and he’s had a chance to go to the property and look at the property, talk with the design committee out at Mine Centre,” said McMaster.
“So we’re just very much in the preliminary stages of pulling some sketches together,” he noted.
