A new Warnica Public School is coming to Barrie after the Ontario government announced a $29.9-million investment toward replacing the aging elementary school.
The funding, announced Friday at the aging school building by Barrie-Innisfil MPP Andrea Khanjin, is part of a broader $1.6-billion provincial school construction package and is expected to create 665 student spaces for families in the growing south-end community. That's roughly double Warnica's existing footprint.
The replacement is to be built on the school's existing site and is intended to help address enrollment pressures while modernizing learning spaces for students.
"As someone who grew up in Barrie, I've seen the growth. I know schools are the fabric," Khanjin said. "When we reflect on what we did in our communities, we often reflect on our school experiences."
For the last two years, the replacement project has been atop Simcoe County District School Board's (SCDSB) capital priorities list, with the building being described as in dire need of a rebuild.
Representatives from the board say they hope construction will begin within the next one to two years, pending development application approval by the City of Barrie.
"Many of our schools are facing increasing accommodation pressures and many of our buildings are aging," said SCDSB chair Brandy Rafeek. "Investments like this are so important because they help ensure students have modern, welcome, learning environments that can continue to meet the needs of growing communities."
The school opened on Warnica Road in Barrie in 1964, and since then it has aged considerably, and become incompatible with current accessibility expectations.
"There are a lot of issues with accessibility in this building that unless we rebuild, we really could not fix," Dawn Stephens, SCDSB director of education, told Barrie360. It would cost us more in trying to fix it and maintain it than it would be to ask or to look for dollars for a rebuild."
Childcare space is not a part of the preliminary plans for the replacement, while Stephens says the announcement kickstarts the process of looking for community partnership for various parts of the building.
For local families, the focus is likely to be on relieving pressure at the existing school and replacing an older building with a newer facility designed for long-term growth.
Even with the doubling of student spaces, the enrollment boundaries are not expected to be changed, mainly due to the school's status as a French immersion institution.
Principal Sean Cappadocia says his role has mainly been to advocate for his students to the school board, and he's happy to see the ball rolling on improvements.
"When you have a vision such as, in your own gym—you're going to want to put new sound systems in, new projectors in—you have that in the back of your mind, 'how long are we going to be in this building?'" he told Barrie360. "Now we know there's a plan in place, it adds a lot of comfort knowing where we're going."
The Ontario government says it is investing heavily in school infrastructure across the province, with funding this year supporting 79 projects that include new schools, additions and retrofits. In total, those projects are set to add more than 29,000 student spaces and over 1,900 licensed childcare spaces.
The funding is being delivered through Ontario’s Capital Priorities program, which supports new school construction, additions, renovations and property purchases.
The province says it plans to invest more than $22 billion over the next decade on school construction, renewal and improvement projects across Ontario.
