Grant adds to the Selkirk Community Pool
The Selkirk Community Pool at the Lord Selkirk Regional Comprehensive Secondary School is now a place where more people in the community can enjoy. They have upgraded the facilities to include three new large changerooms which are accessible from the pool deck.
“We’ve been working [towards getting these new changerooms] for a number of years. When the pool originally had gotten renovated with accessible changerooms in each individual male and female changeroom it still wasn’t accommodating our needs, for the schools and the community,” said Michelle Stamm, pool manager for Lord Selkirk Regional Comprehensive Secondary School.
The original upgrades did help make the facility better suit more members of the community but there are members of the LGBTQ+ community as well as parents with young children of the opposite gender who will find the new changerooms, which are located beside the pool deck instead of in the gendered changerooms, to meet their needs better.
“Originally, the idea was to have smaller change cubicles but because we need to serve individuals in chairs and families with two or three children a three-by-six room isn’t large enough. So, we have three spaces down there that are five-by-six [feet],” said Stamm.
Because of the location of the changerooms there had to be extra considerations to make sure that they were functional.
“Because of location on deck, we had to have a covering on the top of it just because we have the viewing area upstairs and we had to make sure that the doors were low enough, and the partitions were low enough, that people in the pool couldn’t see underneath,” said Stamm.
She explained that these new rooms not only help with making sure that staff and students have more options during the day but also is going to make it so that parents will have more options for weekend and evening lessons.
“We have a huge population of little ones that come. A lot of times it’s a little girl with the dad or mom with the boy and, at a certain age, they become uncomfortable and so, it’s another option,” said Stamm.
She said that it was through efforts by safe student handling through student services that the work to get these grants came about. The grants came from the generosity of the Selkirk and District Community Foundation and Building Sustainable Communities and, in total, approximately $16,000 was received and used to make these renovations.
Stamm hopes that these changes make community members more comfortable using the pool.
“I feel that we will probably have more participation in some of the programs that we offer now that people are finding out that, ‘Oh, it’s not going to be a challenge now to change my student or my kid,’ or, for somebody that wants to be in the pool but doesn’t want to be in a change room with the rest of the male/female population,” said Stamm.
She says that staff are appreciative that they are able to use this resource now and she is thankful to the organizations that made these generous donations to have the project take place.
“We want to recognize the Selkirk and District Community Foundation and Building Sustainable Communities for their generous contribution to a much needed space for school and community,” said Stamm.
