Construction on the new Pineview Valley Elementary School in Kamloops will get underway next year.

This after the B.C. government announced Wednesday that it is earmarking $65.3 million for the long-awaited school.

“Our government understands the importance of supporting families, and we know that Kamloops is a fast-growing city,” Education Minister, Rachna Singh said, in a statement.

“I’m proud that we are providing funding for a new elementary school with a neighbourhood learning centre that will benefit students and families in the Pineview Valley area for years to come.”

The government says the K-to 7 school, which was one of the Kamloops-Thompson School District’s top priorities for the past couple of years, will have 485 seats in total.

“Our Board of Education has been working obviously for a number of years, talking about our increasing growth and pressure needs, so I think that today really is a very welcome, very needed announcement,” SD73 Board Chair, Heather Grieve, said on NL Newsday.

“We still have issues that we need to have addressed in terms of our space pressures but this is a giant announcement for us.”

Located at at 1900 Copperhead Drive, the school will be built on 7.8 acres of vacant land owned by SD73, just south of Snowberry Crescent and east of Python Lake in southwest Kamloops.

This announcement comes a month after Minister Singh hinted that some ‘important news’ was coming soon during a trip to Kamloops.

“I know that we have had a lot of capital asks,” Grieve added. “I know that we haven’t had a brand new school announcement, I believe it was 23 years since we had Pacific Way Elementary that was built at the time.”

“We’ve had incredibly positive conversations with our new minister and the one thing that I will say in my very limited time having an opportunity to know her is that she really listened to the needs of our district.”

Kamloops-South Thompson MLA, Todd Stone, is pleased with the announcement, though he still intends to keep pressing the BC government for more schools to be built.

“This is good but very quickly we turn our attention to the fact that this cannot be all for a long period of time,” Stone told NL News. “We need immediate action on the new school that the government has done kind of a soft announcement on, but we haven’t seen any specific commitment related to a new school in Batchelor Heights.”

“There is absolutely the need for a new high school in Aberdeen. There are huge pressures in Juniper Ridge and so one of the key priorities of the school district is a new elementary school in Juniper West.”

Stone says they will also be pressing for a more permanent solution to schooling needs in Sun Peaks, noting it is becoming one of the fastest-growing communities for school-aged children in British Columbia.

The province says the new Pineview Valley school will incorporate mass timber in its design. It will also include greenhouse gas reduction measures that will reduce emissions by at least 50 per cent than the current LEED Gold Standards.

In addition, it says the school will be built using a climate-resilient design to enable the facility to stay cool during times of extreme heat.

The new Pineview Valley Elementary School is set to open in the summer of 2026.

Stone says he and fellow Kamloops MLA Peter Milobar intend to keep pressure up on the government to ensure that shovels get into the ground for Pineview Valley on-time.

– With files from Paul James and Brett Mineer