The Kamloops Thompson School Board finally got a look at the long awaited long range facilities report to lay out options to deal with an aging infrastructure under siege by a sudden influx of students.

The report found over half of the district’s buildings were over 50 years old with over 80-percent being over 40 years old.

As well capacity challenges are threatening to push many, mostly urban, schools, both elementary and secondary, into crisis.

School Board Chair Kathleen Karpuk says the board has voted to begin the process to re-open Westsyde Elementary to ease pressure.

“We have authorized that we will now go into a consultation process. We will be having meetings with the community talking about where those catchment area boundaries are likely to be. What the effect is going to be on those families, timelines, and we will be going through that and having a very thorough consultation process with the community.”

Karpuk notes the real solution is an influx of desperately needed capital funding from the province.

“We have got several schools where we need additions. We need a new school in Pineview Valley. As we learned tonight we may need an addition on Sahali Secondary.”

The report also called for two new elementary schools in the city’s southwest sector along with a new secondary school.

The board also voted to buy six new portables and add four new buses to try and help ease capacity pressures as the student surge causes pressures to overflow to the bus system.

It has been 16 years since a new school has been built in Kamloops as the district keeps its fingers crossed for an announcement in the new year from the province on a stuffed to the rafters Valleyview Secondary.