Last June 19, the Société d’éducation Gareau (the APÉ of the école des Pionniers-de-Maillardville) organized an information meeting about the school reconstruction project.

About one hundred people attended the meeting. Most of the school's Construction Committee members were in attendance, including three architects as well as representatives of the parents, the CSF, and the Société francophone de Maillardville.

Designed to accommodate 560 kindergarten to Grade 12 students, starting in 2017, the future school building will also include 900 m² of community space. The objectives of the meeting were to present an update on the project, to answer participants’ questions, and to discuss the allocation of the community space. Actually, several options are possible: for example, a daycare, a pre-school, the Franc départ centre, the Tire-Lire resource centre, meeting spaces for seniors and for Francophone scouts, classrooms to host a new program aimed at four-year-olds, a before and after school child minding service, etc.

As announced at the meeting, the APÉ subsequently conducted an online survey to gather opinions and ideas from families and other members of the community. The results of the survey will be presented at the next Construction Committee meeting.