The board chair of the Kamloops-Thompson School District remains hopeful for provincial dollars to come our way in this year’s budget.

No Kamloops schools were mentioned in the budget, but Kathleen Karpuk says the schools that were had all been announced for funding in 2018.

“All the school announcements that are currently on the books have happened over the past year, in 2018. So there were some in February, some in March, some in June, September, November. So we’re still hopeful we’ll get an announcement soon even though we’re not specifically named.”

The province has committed $675 million dollars for infrastructure projects within the Ministry of Education in the next year.

Karpuk says SD73 has been constantly knocking at the ministry’s door.

“The Minister of Education came and visited Valleyview, visited Westmount. Within months of that, we had a Request for Definition report for Valleyview, which is very, very quick.”

Karpuk points out Kamloops is bursting at the seams in terms of K to 12 enrolment in essentially all areas of the city.

“We are a growing city, we are a growing district. And we have multiple areas in our city where we have population pressures in our schools, so not just Valleyview.”

Education Minister Rob Fleming teased a “major” announcement two months ago relating to money for Kamloops schools, but no commitments have been made as of yet.