STERZER’S STORY ‘I remember saying goodbye to my mom was the hardest, and watching my dad have to say goodbye to the woman he loved and the mother of his children. It’s really the mental stuff you have to go through as a child that you don’t wish on anybody.’
TUESDAY
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Dave Eagles/KTW
K A M L O O P S
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$7.4-million trades, technology centre a go By Tim Petruk STAFF REPORTER tim@kamloopsthisweek.com
It has taken eight years of discussion between the KamloopsThompson school district and provincial officials, but the trades and technology centre at NorKam secondary finally appears to have been given the green light. “We’re doing it,” KamloopsNorth Thompson Liberal MLA Terry Lake told KTW, announcing $6.3 million in provincial funding to go along with another $1.1 million promised by SD73. “Given the obvious need for increased trades training, combined with the fact we’ve seen our enrolment in Kamloops stabilize, it swung the argument in favour of
investing in NorKam.” The project will see four multiuse program spaces and two new classrooms built in an area on the northeast side of NorKam secondary, near the cafeteria. The existing music room will be replaced and a common area created for students at the trades centre and the secondary school. Program opportunities include instruction of entry-level skills in several industrial areas, including auto-refinishing prep tech, road builder and heavy construction foundation, painter/decorator, plaster/drywall finisher, lather, cement mason, tile setter and roofer. It will also include instruction in mining exploration, development and production, agriculture
and silviculture technology, energy-efficient building technology, refrigeration and air-conditioning, and power-systems engineering. In its capital plan, School District 73 set as goals for the centre: • Providing retraining opportunities for workers displaced from the forestry sector; • Providing expanded opportunities for aboriginal skilled-trades and technology training; • Providing enhanced access to career transitions for students; • Improving retention and completion rates of students; and • Providing employable skill sets for at-risk students. In 2009, the provincial government said it was ready to contribute nearly $3 million to the project
— which initially had a price tag of about $9 million. Art McDonald, SD73’s director of facilities and transportation, said the district was able to get the cost down to $7.4 million. “There’s a few things we did,” he said. “We cut the area back and construction costs have also dropped.” McDonald said it’s still too early to speculate as to when work might begin on the massive project, which will see the northeast side of NorKam’s campus transformed into a state-of-the-art learning centre. “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s an announcement and then there’s the work we have to do with the ministry and all that, so I really don’t know.”
According to McDonald, planning for the centre began in 2004. Lake said the funding is good news for the Tournament Capital as a whole — and especially North Kamloops. “It’s great because this will be a magnet school for kids around the district,” he said, also referencing NorKam’s international baccalaureate program that began there this year. “It’s part of getting the North Shore to develop that sense of confidence and being seen as a desirable place to live and work,” Lake said. “It’s really changing in terms of how people think about it and this is part of that.”
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