The Lester B Pearson school board has too many students.
Forest Hill Junior in St. Lazare is full, and has about 165 new kindergarten student registrations for the fall. It's equal to nine classrooms.
Pierre-Elliot Trudeau School in Vaudreuil is over-capacity and the board is planning to bus about 70 students to Mount Pleasant in Hudson in the fall.
Board wants to build
To fix the problem, it wants to build a new school to house 450 students at a cost of $8.5 million. The board has government approval and funding.
What it doesn't have is land.
It wants to build in St. Lazare, but the mayor says there is no available municipal land. The city does have park land, but it would have to sell it to the school board, and the school can not buy the land due to government law.
There is some land near some horse trails that could be donated and re-zoned, but officials forsee residents putting up a fight.
If a suitable piece of land is found, it will likely need to be re-zoned, and quickly.
