School Name History

Location

3836 Old Clayburn Road, Abbotsford, BC

Opened

1990

The School

Sandy Hill Elementary opened in 1990. At that time, it was surrounded by forest, but housing developments grew over the years. Even as the building was being constructed, the school board became concerned that rapid development would bring more children to the area than the school could accommodate. The board approved an addition of classrooms and a workroom/storage before the school was even finished. When it opened, Sandy Hill Elementary enrolled just over three hundred pupils from Kindergarten to Grade Seven, although it could accommodate three hundred fifty students.

École Sandy Hill Elementary has always been a dual track school. At first, it offered Grades K-7 in the English track and Grades K-5 in the French track. In the following two years, Grades 6 and 7 were added to the French Immersion program. When middle schools were introduced to the district in the early 2000s, removing Grades 6 and 7 from the elementary schools, Sandy Hill Elementary switched to a Grades K – 5 school in both the French and English programs.  

Origin of the Name

The school was named after the neighbourhood, which is known for its hilliness and its sandy soil.  Before development, the steep rise behind the school was called Sandy Hill. Drainage has always been a problem there because of the sandy soil. One month after the school opened, heavy rainfall caused a retaining wall to collapse. Nobody was injured as it happened early in the morning. The school’s name was originally written Sandyhill, all one word, as was the road.

When the secretary of the new school, Mrs Beager, arrived, she asked the principal, Monty Moran, if she could write it using two words. He said that it was fine with him if the Abbotsford School Board and the Ministry of Education agreed, which they did. Nowadays, not only is the school’s name spelled using two words, but the street address also uses Sandy Hill with two words.