New $82M secondary school under construction in Duncan, B.C.

The school is expected to open in 2024: (Rendering)

The Cowichan Valley School District (SD79) has released its design plans for an upcoming school in Duncan, following a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday afternoon.

The building will serve as the new Cowichan Secondary School, and the school district says the new build has been needed for quite some time.

"Probably 20 years ago, there was a student demonstration to the board about the quality of the maintenance and the building and so on, that showed deterioration," said SD79 board of education chair, Candace Spilsbury.

"As well as with the new learning styles by the new curriculum, we know that the current building is just not constructed for those wonderful opportunities for how children learn now," she said.

The three-storey, seismically sound, state-of-the-art replacement school is being built on University Way next to the Vancouver Island University Cowichan Campus, and the Cowichan Community Centre.

The new build will feature collaborative learning spaces, an Indigenous language and culture centre, a health and wellness centre, and high-tech meeting room.

"The real highlight for students is the way the collaborative classrooms have been designed together, with lots of space around those classrooms as well as throughout the building," said Spilsbury

The secondary school replacement comes with more than $80 million in funding from the Ministry of Education, while the board of education picks up the remaining costs.

"Just over two million," said Spilsbury.

"Can you imagine what a beautiful building it will be with that funding?" she added.

The Cowichan Secondary School replacement is being built with initial capacity for 1, 100 students with expansion space for an additional 400 students in the future.

The new school is expected to open in 2024.