By the end of this month, the old J. W. Sexsmith and Sir James Douglas elementary schools in Vancouver will be gone.

After more than 100 years of serving as landmarks in their communities, they’ve been replaced by new schools as part of the seismic mitigation program funded by the province.

According to Vancouver school board chair Mike Lombardi, the school district put out a request for proposals to repurpose J.W. Sexsmith elementary, but didn't receive any. He also noted that Sir James Douglas elementary was in a worse shape than J.W. Sexsmith.

Lombardi said that the district has until the March 31 deadline set by the province to complete the demolition of J.W. Sexsmith and Sir James Douglas elementary schools.

And as the board proceeds with community consultations on its long-range facilities plan, which may see the potential closure of up to 13 schools by year 2030, Lombardi said that one of the policies that the district will develop as part of the plan is around heritage preservation.

However, Lombardi noted that fighting for heritage won’t be easy when it comes to B.C.’s Ministry of Education.

“The ministry does not recognize heritage,” Lombardi told the Straight in a phone interview. “They do not provide any funding for heritage. And, of course, all capital funding comes from the ministry.”

So far, according to the board chair, the district has been successful in preserving heritage buildings in most of the seismic-mitigation projects it has done. He said that out of the 26 schools either completed for repairs or undergoing upgrades, only six had been torn down and replaced with new ones.

Judith Mosley, executive director of the Vancouver Heritage Foundation, said that her organization is keen to see how heritage will be considered by the school board in its long-range facilities plan.

“Many of those schools have endured, and clearly there are many of the schools across the city that are of heritage value and deserve consideration from that point of view,” Mosley told the Straight by phone.

The province has required the school board to achieve 95 percent capacity utilization by 2030 or else it will not fund seismic upgrades.

Mosley said: “What we would like to see is that when a building is going to be redundant, that there is an opportunity to really look at how it can retained and reused in some form.”