The Kamloops-Thompson School District is hoping a funding agreement to rebuild Parkcrest Elementary will be in place later this month.

Director of facilities Art McDonald says designs haven’t been done yet, but says the new school will have room for between 100 and 150 more students.

“That’s to deal with predicted enrolment growth out there. And also the enrolment capacity that we were short before the school burned down.”

The former Parkcrest school had about 350 students, from kindergarten to grade seven.

“There’s a fair bit of growth in Brock, and there’s more to come. I’ll give the Ministry [of Education] credit, they listened to us as far as future growth and they’ve allowed us to build a bigger school. Which is good,” McDonald says.

The new school still expected to cost in the neighbourhood of $38 million to build back, as was stated late last year.

Parkcrest Elementary burned down in September of 2019, and then-Education Minister Rob Fleming said shortly after that the province would be expediting the rebuild plans.

McDonald says the process to get the funding agreement in place between SD73 and the province has been held up, because of COVID-19 and also the provincial election.

“Once we get funding approval, then we actually go ahead and hire architects. Go through all the details of how much area we’ve been given and the capacity, and then we do detailed layouts from there. We’ve done preliminary layouts, but they always change as you get into details.”