MUENSTER, WATROUS — A major renovation at Muenster School and the consolidation of the two schools at Watrous remains on the Horizon School Division’s wish list. They will add a third entry before submitting it to the province.
Each year, the provincial education ministry asks each school division to submit three major capital projects in February. They’ll then consider which projects will be funded in future provincial budgets.
Kevin Garinger, Horizon’s director of education, said the board is still working to find a third addition through communicating with local school community councils (SCCs) to see what is needed.
“We’re asking for an extension to continue our engagement with community around another one,” Garinger said. “We’ll engage SCCs and that sort of thing as necessary, certainly discuss things with staff and talk about the great potential any capital funding request will bring to the community.”
Listed as the top priority on the list, the Muenster School renovation would include a relocation of the school’s office, as well as move the industrial arts program in-house. Right now, the program is housed three blocks away. The project has been listed on the division’s capital project list for a number of years, and is estimated to cost about $1.2 to $1.5 million.
“Muenster is seeing a population increase over the last number of years and certainly one of the programming needs in that school is around industrial arts,” Garinger said. “We’re not able to do that in the school and so having an opportunity to have students engaged in that type of programming is important to us.”
The Watrous build is a consolidation project, similar to Lanigan which received funding in 2020 from the Ministry of Education. Watrous is now entering its second year on the list. The project is expected to cost over $20 million.
