New North Oakville Elementary School Breaks Ground on Preserve Drive

North Oakville is getting a new public elementary school, and the shovels went into the ground last Thursday at 3490 Preserve Drive. The building has no name yet. For now the Halton District School Board calls it Oakville #5 PS.

It is being built for 926 students from kindergarten through grade 8, across three storeys, with 88 licensed childcare spaces and an open concept library. The Ontario Ministry of Education provided roughly $43 million in capital funding, according to the board. The site sits inside a residential neighbourhood that is still going up around it, and that is the reason for the school: north Oakville has more children arriving than its current schools can hold.

Audrey Wubbenhorst, the trustee for Oakville Wards 5 and 7, put it plainly at the ceremony. "Our schools in Wards 5 and 7 are really bursting at the seams," she said. The new building is expected to ease that, taking a mix of students already enrolled at schools in surrounding neighbourhoods and children who have not started yet.

HDSB Superintendent of Education Claire Proteau said the size of the place matters as much as the space in it. She wants a school community small enough that "the principal, the vice principal, the teachers, the caretaker, the office staff knows all the kids." She also told Oakville News that "one adult can make a world of a difference in a student's life."

Mayor Rob Burton, Ward 7 Councillor Scott Xie, Ward 5 Councillor Jeff Knoll and MPP Effie Triantafilopoulos were all at the groundbreaking, alongside students who will eventually walk through the doors. Abass Khan, currently in Grade 5 at River Oaks Public School, was asked what he was looking forward to most. "Going to gym class. There's a huge gym here," he said. "It's a good school."

Construction is already underway on the site. The school is expected to open in the fall of 2028.