New school coming to north Winnipeg's Waterford Green area

A newdual-track kindergarten to Grade 8 school will be built in the north Winnipeg neighbourhood ofWaterfordGreen.

The 60,000-square-footschool will include a child-care centre and capacity for at least 500 students, the province announced Friday morning.

Design work on the project is expected to begin shortly with an estimated opening date of fall 2018, Premier Greg Selinger said.

The Waterford Green neighbourhood is just south of Jefferson Avenue in the InksterGardens area. The schoolwill be built on a lot on Jefferson Avenue between King Edward Street and Brooksmere Trail.

"Winnipeg is growing and our division is growing with it," said Sherri Rollins, vice-chair for the Winnipeg School Divisionboard of trustees."We're very excited about building a brand new school for the many families who are continuing to move into this newly developed area."

At the same time as the school announcement, Selinger said the provinceis providing an additional $3 million to hire more than 50 more teachers to support its mandate forsmaller elementaryclass sizes.

That's on top of the two previous funding announcements made last year for the same purpose.

• Manitoba spends $3M, adds 50 teachers to keep class sizes small

In 2011, the Manitoba government announced it would provide support to enable school divisions to cap kindergarten to Grade 3 classrooms at 20 students by September 2017.

Selingeralso announced four school additions to create 14 new classrooms at:

• cole Guyot in the Louis Riel School Division.
• cole Crescentview School in Portage la Prairie.
• Dr. FWL Hamilton School in the River East Transcona School Division.
• Gillis School in the Sunrise School Division.

Since the 2011 mandate for smaller class sizes was announced, theprovince has provided more than $27.5 millionfor 27 schools to create 62 new and renovated classrooms.