Six high schools in Surrey will soon open with longer hours than other schools, as a mitigation strategy to handle rising student enrolment out-pacing available classroom space.
What was first five has now turned into six secondary schools in the Surrey school district implementing extended day schedules come September for the fall semester. Those schools include Grandview Heights, Fleetwood Park, Lord Tweedsmuir, Kwantlen Park, Tamanawis and Salish secondaries.
“Extended-day isn’t an option we want to implement,” Surrey school board chair Laurie Larsen said in the release from February, when the announcement for the first five schools came.
Approved at the Feb. 14 regular school board meeting, district officials shared the parameters of an extended day model. This means the six schools will now have five periods in a day instead of the standard four. However, students will still only attend four periods.
The Surrey students will either attend the first four blocks, the last four or the first and last two blocks with an extended break in-between.
Salish Secondary is the newest school to join the list for the extended day model, after projected enrolment and student course selections showed the necessity for it.
Other changes at Surrey Schools could be on the horizon as student enrolment continues to grow and new schools take several years to be completed. Possibilities include hybrid in-person and online learning or tri-semester schooling, which would mean regular school would also run in the summer months, to create three semesters instead of two, to spread out the number of students in the building at a time.
Capacity at the school sites may increase with the new model, but likely only by 10 or 15 per cent, district deputy superintendent Andrew Holland shared at the February board meeting. Surrey Schools also predicts that the model will allow more students to access shared resources such as libraries and tech labs.
