New Westminster schools face overcrowding as 1,600 new students arrive in two years

New Westminster's schools are buckling under rapid population growth. The city, Canada's second-most dense municipality, added more than 20,000 residents between 2006 and 2021, and public school enrollment has surged in tandem. Between the 2023-24 and 2025-26 school years alone, the district gained 1,600 students—a stunning influx that has left the system scrambling.

With just under 10,000 students across the district, New Westminster Secondary is the only high school and already one of B.C.'s largest at nearly 2,000 students. To create a second secondary option, the school board is proposing to tear down École Lord Tweedsmuir Elementary School—the district's largest parcel of land and a 89-year-old building the province had funded with $6.1 million for seismic retrofitting in 2020. In its place, a brand new "super-campus" would house up to 2,300 students in grades 6 to 12, consolidating junior and senior secondary education.

The three existing middle schools would convert to elementary schools to offset the seats lost when Tweedsmuir closes. But parents are alarmed about where their children will go while the new campus is being built. The district's proposal: move Tweedsmuir students temporarily to Stride Avenue Community School in neighboring Burnaby—a two-storey building assessed as at the highest risk of structural failure in an earthquake.

Parent Jamie Owen raised immediate concerns. Stride Avenue is set to be vacated because Burnaby is moving its students to a newly built, seismically safe school next door. "From what we've been reading, there is more seismic activity in our area," Owen said. "It is a real concern if there were to be an earthquake and our kids were in that building." When Owen and her family toured Stride Avenue, they found broken windows, rotting wood stair posts, and an overgrown green space littered with debris—conditions suggesting the building has been left unmaintained. "Our kids looked devastated," she said. "They actually looked at me and said, 'Can we be home-schooled instead?'"