If you live in the Westvale area of Kitchener Waterloo, your children may be going to a different high school next year. Sir John A MacDonald Secondary School (SJAM), Waterloo’s newest high school has already hit capacity. It has 1550 students. Currently, there are about 230 students from the Westvale neighborhood attending SJAM.
Building another high school or putting a major addition (25 classrooms) onto SJAM isn’t feasible with another local secondary school – Waterloo Kitchener Collegiate Institute (KCI) at only 72% capacity. In the short term, changing the catchment area for Westvale’s secondary students from SJAM to KCI seems like the best solution, however there are two issues:
- Much of Waterloo’s residential housing growth is in SJAM’s catchment area. In ten years time more classrooms are going to be needed.
- SJAM is the second highest ranked school in Waterloo Region. KCI is ranked ninth.
Another Waterloo Secondary School – Waterloo Collegiate Institute (WCI) is already over-capacity by about 200 students. WCI celebrated it’s 50 years last year amidst rumblings and rumors (from my kids) of its impending closure.
