New 600-student school in Winnipeg's Waterford Green area to open in 2020

Parents in the northwestWinnipeg neighbourhood of Waterford Green now know whentheir new school willopen its doors.

The province announceddetails Thursday about the yet-to-be-builtschool, expectedto open in time for the 2020 school year.

The school will be built on a lot on Jefferson Avenue east of King Edward Street in the Waterford Green neighbourhood, which is just south of Jefferson in the Inkster Gardens area.

"Families in this growing neighbourhood can look forward to a high-quality, modern learning environment," said Education and Training Minister Kelvin Goertzen in a release.

Design work on the new kindergarten to Grade 8 school, originally announced in January 2016, is nearing completion, the province said Thursday, and a tender for construction should be released at the end of November.

'Room to grow'

The 76,430-square-foot school will be dual-track, with room for 600 English and French immersion students. Itwill be able to accommodate up to nine more classrooms, adding room for 225 more students if needed.

"It's got room to grow," said Premier Brian Pallister during Thursday's announcement. "Just like Winnipeg is growing, so too do our schools need to be designed so that they can grow too, so that more students are able to get educated in a really good school."

The school will include a science, technology, electronics and mathematics lab, along with two dedicated science laboratories, a large gymnasium open to the community, an art room, a home economics lab and an industrial arts lab.

There will also be a child-care centre with 54 preschool and 20 infant spaces.

The building will achieve LEED Silver and Manitoba Hydro Power Smart energy standards.

The project was first announced by Manitoba's previous NDP government, which said at the time it was expected to open in the fall of 2018.