The new school coming to the Pineview Valley neighbourhood in Kamloops now has a name.

Appearing on NL Mornings, SD73 board chair Heather Grieve, said Snine (pronounced SNEE’-na) is the name the school district has chosen, after a consultation process that yielded responses from 1,300 people.

“It was quite a process actually that started a while ago, it was actually between January and March where there was a process of consultation,” Grieve said, noting the  consultation process considered five possible names.

“Sníne,” the Secwepemc word for owl, saw 196 gathered in favour from the community and was one of the top two names recommended to the board. The other was “Pineview Valley,” which had 856 responses in favour.

Other possible names included Copperhead Elementary which got 174 responses in favour, S7etqwllp (Ponderosa Pine) Elementary had 59 responses and Spelq’wéqs (Turtles) Elementary had 43 responses.

“Committee members were meeting and the representatives from that committee were people who were part of the pack at McGowan Elementary with students who will be attending the new school or are in that catchment area,” Grieve added. “Representatives from DPAC, our employee groups, CUPE, KTTA, the district has representatives as well as do trustees, Tk’emlúps assigned one of their councillors.”

“There were a lot of people that were part of this process and up until April 2, there two periods of time where the public was asked for feedback around the names that were being put forward and brought to the board last night were the two names that the committee suggested come forward to the board of education for consideration.”

Although the consultation found an overwhelming majority chose Pineview Elementary, Grieve says the consultation isn’t actually a voting process so they didn’t put it out to the public and say they were going to look at the voting as a way to make a decision.

She says it was important to recognize the Indigenous history of the region.

“There were some very robust conversations that happened at the committee level and we wanted to respect that and also respecting that part of our work towards reconciliation is looking at the importance of the Secwepemctsín language and the importance of really honouring the lands with which we are located as well.”

“It was a conversation around looking at the importance of the Secwepemctsín language and looking at if there was a way we could sort of hear from everybody but then make a really informed decision around what would be the appropriate name moving forward.”

“When it came to Snine it was a lot about the connection to the name and people really feeling like that name was something that was meaningful when you look at the symbolism of the owl, when you look at the connection to knowledge and intuitiveness and growth and all of these kind of things that it was more about the connection to the name, so we took all of that into consideration.”

The new Snine Elementary is set to open in the fall of 2026.