Citing issues with funding and space considerations, Dufferin County has pulled out of a partnership with the Upper Grand District School Board to build two new classrooms at the Island Lake Public School.

The project is part of the provincial government's primary class size initiative which was put in place to lower the studentteacher ratio in the primary division. The County was interested in sharing the facility as a child-care hub called Best Start, but has since pulled its funding.

The school board says the project will still go ahead and has set aside more than $650,000 in funding.

But there is no word yet on when exactly it will start, board spokesperson Maggie McFadzen said.

She said school board members were disappointed that the County pulled out of the project, even though it will eventually go ahead, adding that the County had applied along with the school board promising to provide its share of the funding but opted out on grounds the tendered price was too high.

The board had looked for ways to cut costs to try to still have the County as a partner but the County had already determined not to go ahead with its part of the project.

"We still have to build our classrooms so we're going to build a freestanding, two-classroom building to meet primary class size," said Ms. McFadzen. "We're going to investigate all the avenues available to us to build and operate it, so our staff is in the process of investigating all different manners of building."

She added there is some concern that the school board get started as soon as possible.

In a letter to the board, Daniel Best, the county's director of community services, said changes to the original design were proposed "and were reviewed by County staff in anticipation of moving forward with a new tender. Concerns were raised within the Community Services Department with respect to steadily increasing programming pressures, forecasting and recreating our current space which we have maximized."

Mr. Best added that by moving forward with this project, "knowing that the needs of our stakeholders and programming would be compromised due to funding and space considerations, it was determined by staff to recommend to the Community Services Committee that moving forward with the Island Lake project would not be appropriate."

Ms. McFadzen said the school board is looking at the project as something that could fulfill several purposes. The plans will call for a "green" design and it could be a learning centre where they could teach students about green technologies.