After years of uncertainty, Penticton’s Francophone community has found its home.
B.C. Minister of Education Rob Fleming visited Ecole Entre Lacs Monday to announce the province has provided $11.5 million to the Conseil Scolaire Francophone (B.C. Francophone School Board) to purchase the building.
The board had been leasing the school from the Okanagan Skaha School District since 2017, when McNicoll Park Middle School closed.
“Now it really is yours, your school is a permanent Francophone institution,” Fleming told students and teachers during an assembly. “You are no longer tenants. You are no longer short-term lease holders. You own this building. You can develop and grow this school.”
Just fewer than 170 elementary students currently attend the Ecole Entre Lacs, while high school students attend a Francophone program at Penticton Secondary.
There are plans to phase in a secondary program at Entre Lacs, making it a full K-12 school, which will serve as much more than a school for the local Francophone community.
“There is no Francophone centre (in Penticton) short of meeting at someone’s house and having everyone come to the house,” CSF board of trustees president Marie-Pierre Lavoie said. “It’s great to have a school where the whole community can meet and do activities.”
The property sale includes the former Nkwala Middle School facility, which closed years ago due to declining enrolment. The ministry says it will be working with the CSF and City of Penticton “to decide the future of the Nkwala site so it can be of better use to the community.”
B.C.’s Francophone school system is not french immersion. For a student to attend a Francophone school, they must speak French as their first language. If coming from outside B.C., they must have received their previous education in French in Canada. Section 23 of the Charter guarantees those students a Francophone education.
Nearly 6,100 students attend 41 schools managed by the CSF, including 24 homogeneous French-language schools, throughout the province.
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