The Kamloops Thompson School District says student growth means a growing list of capital needs.

School board chair Kathleen Karpuk says there could be about a thousand more students within five years. Right now there are 14,800 students enrolled in the school district, according to the school district’s long-range facilities plan presented this week.

Karpuk says the school district needs to build new schools and upgrade old ones.

“Our buildings are very old. We do need to start considering that very quickly, the costs of maintaining them and keeping them up to par are going to very quickly outstrip our abilities to find the money for that. Costs for roofing, for example, have tripled in the past few years. What used to cost us $200,000 dollars to re-roof a school is now $600,000 dollars, and the funding we receive from the provincial government has not gone up.”

Karpuk says the majority of schools in Kamloops are more than 50 years old.

Meanwhile, portables are used for schools here as much as just about any school district in the province, Karpuk indicates. There are 49 portables at Kamloops schools, which she says grew this year with the shuffling that happened after the Parkcrest Elementary fire.

“That took eight portables in order for us to accomplish all of that. So again, we are adding portable everywhere. We are at a point where, per capita, we have almost the same number of portables per student as Surrey,” she says.

“The provincial government does not fund portables. That comes out of our operating grant. It’s nice that we have new students, that does give us extra money. Unfortunately that first year that those students are showing up, every time we get an additional 25 students – very often now – we’re funding a portable.”

Karpuk says some classroom spaces can be reallocated, but she says that comes at the expense of taking away space for much-needed programs.