* IMPORTANT- Please read *

Greetings Maple Grove Families,

Good Morning!  We’re writing to advise you of a couple of construction and traffic challenges that we would like all of our students and families to be aware of.  Some of these will be short-lived, others will be ongoing through the school year.

For the past 6 months, Magee Secondary School has been undergoing a building envelope upgrade.  The upgrade was necessary to prevent excessive water damage that threatened the integrity of the building structure.  As part of the Magee upgrade, there is a lot of construction equipment, portables, trucks and other machinery on site. Sometimes, through the upgrade process, the equipment is situated on Maple Grove property.  The project managers are in contact with both school administrators and are aware that young children and youths are present on both sites.  They are taking precautions to ensure the students are safe (e.g., moving equipment outside of school hours, etc).  We anticipate some of this work to continue through the upcoming school year.

Also, there has been some work taking place to facilitate services to the new Magee portables (some of which is being drawn from Maple Grove).  This involved two areas of our site:
a) our covered area/ mini field- running utility service to the new portables at Magee.  We anticipate that this work is now completed and will not be an issue for our students.  There is some grading of the field to do before we can get our all weather primary field back.  Until then, the area is completely fenced off.  The primary students may continue to use our primary adventure play area at the south end of the building as well as our undercover area to the west of the school.

b) running new utility services between the two schools (near the grass field and our earthquake container and our adventure playground).  This phase of the project has been completed, but the reseeding and new grass needs to be completed.  The fencing that runs North-South will likely stay up past the reseeding phase to allow the newly planted grass a chance to take.  This blocks westward access to Magee and its field.

In addition to the Magee envelope upgrade there has been  some site prep taking place in anticipation of the new Maple Grove Elementary School seismic project and the appropriate upgrades to city connections that are necessary under present day building code.  These upgrades were also necessary to service the portables.  This involved work at the North end of the property on 45th Ave.  We anticipate that the CoV will be finished their work on 45th Ave later this coming week.  Until then, we advise all families NOT to access Maple Grove from 45th (north of the school/ from the west).  (please see the sketched map at the conclusion of this blog)

In summary, while much of the work has been completed over the summer there are some residual effects from the work- and some finishing work that needs to take place.

We are defaulting to our historical recommendations to families… if you can walk to school, please do so.  We apologize to our families to the west as they will have to walk to Cypress street (about 100m past the opening in the fence they usually use) and access the north end of the school near our gym.  We further recommend to families that if you drive, park a block or two to the east of the school and walk along 45th or 47th to the the school.  Please use our south, north entrance or west entrance.  Please do not use the front entrance as there is NO WALKWAY for your child.  Delivery trucks use our “C” driveway all day and they are not expecting children to be walking on the driveway.

Also, please do not use the staff parking lot as a drop-off area.  Staff do their best to get to work on time and blocking them from parking in a timely manner is inconsiderate.  The COV has installed new 3 min parking signs all around Maple Grove.  We encourage you to consider parking around the perimeter of the building if you’re running short on time in the morning and not able to walk the block or two to reduce traffic.

We appreciate that this was a lot of information and not an ideal way to have our year start.  However, all of this is being done to ensure Magee and Maple Grove students have safe new schools in the coming years.  We view this as short pain, for long term gain!  We will all work together and come out the other side happy to be in dry, safe amazing new schools.  Please refer to this blog for regular updates.

Happy Schooling,
The Maple Grove Staff