WRDSB breaks ground on new Kitchener school

The Waterloo Region District School Board has started construction on its newest elementary school.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held Thursday at the Thomas Slee Drive property in Kitchener’s rapidly growing Doon South neighbourhood.

The school, which doesn’t yet have a name, will have room for 591 students from Junior Kindergarten to Grade 8. It will also include a child care centre.

“All things are on track and we’re expecting to be ready in time for September 2025,” jeewan chanicka, the director of education for the WRDSB, said.

“We want kids who come to school to have a different experience,” explained Maedith Radlein, vice-chair of the WRDSB Board of Trustees. “To feel that this is a place that they can connect with, a place where they are seen, and a place where they can be the best they want to be.”

The school board hopes it will also ease pressure on the nearby Groh Public School, which opened in September 2017. Millions of dollars have been spent on upgrades and portables to accommodate the growing need for space in the community.

“We moved to this area in 2020 and [my daughter] spent the last three years in a portable,” said parent Charlotte Middleton. “[It was] usually in a split class with a classroom size of usually no smaller than about 35 children, and it has absolutely impacted her education 100 per cent. So I’m happy to see this new school built.”

She’d like to see better planning for growing neighbourhoods.

“I think we really need to start having those conversations so we don’t underserve, and continue to underserve, our children,” Middleton explained.

chanicka said local students are the WRDSB’s priority.

“We’re giving families a better chance to be able to get somewhere that’s closer to them and be able to provide the opportunities they need,” he said.

WRDSB will be asking the public to weigh in on potential school names in the coming months.