Growth in Newcastle is evident and a new school, to many seems a pretty straight forward progress. However, in February 2022 Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board submitted a Capital Priorities Business Case for a new K-12 school at the Grady Drive/Rudell Road property. The request was refused by the Ministry of Education. It was pointed out that Clarke High School has only a 24 per cent utilization. That translates in funding guidelines to space available in this family of schools.
Yes, but Clarke and The Pines are located on a very busy highway and moving the schools in to town is the right thing to do. KPR has assured the community they will continue to submit Capital Priorities Program requests for a new elementary/secondary school at the Grady/Rudell location.
Why is it so difficult to get straight answers to questions regard-ing new school builds? It seems that by default, developers add ‘future school site’ to their site plans, but one never materializes. Why? Because developers don’t build schools.
