The superintendent of the Kamloops-Thompson School District says preserving Old Pinantan Elementary would be significant for Kamloops.

Alison Sidow says the plan is to turn the school into a living museum – where students can take lessons and learn what school was like 70 years ago.

And she says the plan hits for her on a professional and a personal level.

“My grandmother actually, she was a single mother who taught in one-room schools all over the province of British Columbia, and sometimes she got the job only because she had two children with her and that meant there were enough students. So I have a long history of one-room schools with my family, so it’s important on a personal and a professional level to preserve this,” Sidow says.

“It’s important, I think, that we maintain a connection to our heritage, but that we also explore what that meant not only for settlers in the area, but what did that also mean for Indigenous communities? So it’s an opportunity to not only deconstruct a school and raise it up as a living museum, but deconstruct as well and think about our past and where we want to go in the future.”

The School District wants to take down Old Pinantan and re-build it in Upper Sahali, and has applied for $140,000 in provincial funding to do so.