THUNDER BAY – Raeya Stewart headed back to school after the holiday break by moving in to her brand new classroom.
About 120 students from Hyde Park Public School, including Raeya and her Grade 1 classmates, shifted down the block on Tarbutt Street to their new home at Kingsway Park Public School as the $6 million expansion officially opened on Monday.
“It’s amazing,” she said. “Now we’re joined together with the Kingsway students.”
The Lakehead Public School Board in 2016 approved consolidating Hyde Park, a kindergarten to Grade 3 school, to transform the larger Kingsway Park into a full kindergarten to Grade 8 elementary school. An initial target was for the transition to be completed for the start of the school year but that was pushed back when construction began in April. A revised timeline would have seen the merger completed in November but it was delayed until after the two-week Christmas break.
The addition of the Hyde Park students brings the school population of the expanded Kingsway Park up to nearly 375.
Kingsway Park principal Darren Lentz said staff members from both schools were heavily involved in preparing for the switch and made sure it was handled with care.
“We wanted to ensure they knew where they were going and they felt calm, cool and collected about where they were going and the change is big,” Lentz said.
“For little kids, we as adults might look at the change and say it’s a great new school but they’ve got ties to another place they know and love and we have to make sure we’re adjusting to that, bringing them in and creating the same feeling they had at their old school.”
The addition includes a brand new gymnasium with wood floor, four new classrooms including three connected kindergarten rooms. The transition also brought over the existing daycare program that had been hosted at Hyde Park, which has a separate entrance.
The new space also features a specialized culinary room, which will be utilized by grades 7 and 8 students in all public board elementary schools that feed into Westgate Collegiate and Vocational Institute.
“A lot of our academy programs have incorporated culinary into the programs and this is just going to expand that real-life, authentic, hands-on learning but also give them practical skills they’ll use throughout their lives,” Lentz said.
“It’s just going to create many more opportunities for our kids throughout the system.”
As far as the transition, so far so good, Lentz said.
“I’ve literally not been in my office so no kids have been in my office all day. I’ve been wandering about the school, looking at the smiles and checking in with people. Everybody seems to be doing really well, kids and staff are doing really well.”
