Catholic School Board picks consultant for St. Kateri expansion

Huron-Superior Catholic District School Board trustees have moved the renovation and expansion of the board's St. Kateri Outdoor Learning Centre a step closer to becoming a reality.

H-SCDSB trustees awarded the contract for professional architectural and engineering consulting services for renovations at St. Kateri Outdoor Learning Centre to Nor Mech Engineering Inc.

Nor Mech’s fee for services is 10.95 per cent of the project’s $835,000 budget.

“We’re very excited,” said Danny Viotto, H-SCDSB director of education speaking to SooToday after Wednesday evening's board meeting.

“We’re always attempting to respond to the different needs of our students, the different types of learners. St. Kateri is an amazing place where we can offer a variety of programming and we’re grateful to the Ministry of Education for approving us to use some of our proceeds of disposition to expand St. Kateri so that we can continue to expand its programming,” Viotto said.

The majority of that $835,000 in funding comes from sale of the former St. Hubert, St. Ann and St. Theresa schools, Viotto said. 

“Our students love St. Kateri and our staff always look forward to taking their students out there. We’re expanding our programs to our Grades 6, 7 and 8 students and our high school students are already out there, so we’re trying to maximize as much as we can.”

“If we had more money we would expand even more. It’s an excellent place,” Viotto said.

The centre, formerly known as Camp Korah and located on Goulais Avenue, offers outdoor learning experiences to students from kindergarten to Grade 12.

The renovations and expansion will allow St. Kateri to accommodate 60 more students than its current capacity of 170, the board said in a previous news release.

The board's next step is to go out to tender and select a firm to perform the actual construction work. 

The name of that firm will be announced at a future board meeting.