These Charlottetown schools will soon be over capacity

The P.E.I. Public Schools Branch board approved a study Monday night to get more details on how to deal with expected overcrowding at five schools in Charlottetown.

Parker Grimmer, director of the Public Schools Branch, presented the news of the coming problems to the board at its meeting Monday.

"Several schools in the Charlottetown area are going to show steady growth over the next three to five years and they will be over what we call functional capacity in the next three to five years," Grimmer told CBC's Island Morning.

The five schools are:

• Charlottetown Rural High School.
• Colonel Gray High School.
• Queen Charlotte Intermediate School.
• Spring Park Elementary School.
• West Kent Elementary School.

In addition,Birchwood Intermediate is being watched for possibly going over capacity in five to six years.

The data used comes from studies that were part of the consultations last year that led to major rezonings for students in kindergarten to Grade 9.

There will be no changes until at least the 2020-21 school year, but the work on those coming changes starts now, said Grimmer.

"They also recognized we needed to get to work now to try to figure out the challenges for our student populations," he said.

Grimmer said there is no set agenda yet regarding whether they are looking at new schools or expandingschools. That will be part of the coming process.

The scope of the study will be decided in the next few days, he said, and more information will be released on it then. The study should be completed by the fall.

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