It appears a major project for schools in South Hill will get some funding for the planning stage.

The provincial budget has $3.3 million earmarked this year for the advancement of three major school projects in the province, including what they say is a new facility to replace Sacred Heart, St. Mary, Empire and Westmount schools.

There is no timeline currently for the schools to be replaced by the joint-use facility between the Prairie South School Division – which is responsible for Empire and Westmount – and the Holy Trinity School Division which is responsible for Sacred Heart and St. Mary.

“This is something that both boards have been working on for at least the last three years and maybe a little bit longer than that,” said Tony Baldwin, director of education for Prairie South. “There have been many years put into the planning process and this is a really good outcome.”

The need for the new school is an ongoing issue for Prairie South.

“We have one very old school, and one school that if you looked at all the schools in the city, it would be the school that’s in the least best shape at Westmount,” Baldwin said. “Holy Trinity has got some pretty significant infrastructure struggles with their schools on South Hill. We’ve known that sometime in the fairly near future, that we would have a need for potentially four new schools up there, so the opportunity to build one shared school and pool our resources and do something even more special for kids and families is a pretty unique opportunity.”

Things lined up at the right time with four schools close to the same area, Baldwin said.

it’s hard to tell exactly when a shovel will be in the ground, and also exactly where it might be.

“We’ll have some work to do with the city, and we’ve already had some conversations with the city about to where the school might be,” Baldwin said. “Then we’ve got some work to do between the two school divisions, and the parents and the kids who are associated with the four schools that are involved.”

"While there is lots of work still to be done, the finished school will be something that will serve the needs of children in Moose Jaw for generations. That’s pretty exciting work,” said Sean Chase, his counterpart with Holy Trinity in a media release.

There will be a public engagement meeting next Thursday at Riverview at 7 p.m. to gather information. “I don’t know if we’ll have a whole lot of answers at that point, but our goal is to collect a whole bunch of questions and share what our journey has been to this point.