Sun Peaks Elementary will welcome grade eight and nine students starting this fall.

At its latest board meeting, SD73 agreed to make the change as the Education Society is running out of space. Board Chair Kathleen Karpuk says right now high school students at Sun Peaks are taking online courses. The district does provide a teacher, but all course work that students are doing is through the education society at Sun Peaks.

“When we get to those higher grades, being in a rural school does mean that there is less choice in terms of what students are able to take. And in order to make sure they have a broader choice, one thing we do is have all of rural students on a common timetable and we video conferences back and forth.”

Karpuk says it has already changed the name. “We’ve renamed the school from Sun Peaks Elementary to Sun Peaks School. And we’re doing something a little different. Currently the Kindergarten to grade seven students at Sun Peaks are on a four day school week. And they’re going to stay on a four day school week… but because our eventual goal is to have K-12 up at Sun Peaks, that does mean that there’s some logistical challenges to moving to a four day week for the high school students. So they won’t be. They’re going to be on a five day week.”