PENHOLD - Four new relocatable classrooms and a connecting hallway have been approved for Jessie Duncan Elementary School to ease increasing student growth pressures in the community.
At its March 14 monthly meeting, board members for the Chinook's Edge School Division approved the use of revenues from land sales to fund a new 102-square-metre connector for the four new classrooms.
Construction is scheduled to begin by early May, with the classrooms installed and ready for students for the 2018-19 school year.
The cost of the connector construction project will be about $200,000, said Shawn Russell, assistant superintendent of corporate services.
The cost of the classrooms, which will bring the total relocatable units to eight installed over a two-year period, will be picked up by Alberta Education, which also picked up the bill for the first four relocatable classrooms that were operational for the 2017-18 school year. Chinook's Edge paid the $150,000 cost for the 65-square-metre connecting hallway at Jessie Duncan School.
Russell said the latest initiative is part of a plan to relieve the ongoing pressure of escalating student growth at Penhold's three existing public schools.
"We were over 100 per cent utilization rates in that town, so by adding these classrooms on for two years, last year and this year, we will have added eight classrooms on, which will help address the space issues at all the schools," said Russell, adding the four new classrooms at Jessie Duncan will result in changes to grade configurations for all three Penhold schools.
For the 2018-19 school year, Jessie Duncan, which is now serving students from pre-K to Grade 2, will be for students from pre-K to Grade 3, while Penhold Elementary School, now for students from grades 3 to 5, will be for grades 4 to 6, with Penhold Crossing Secondary School changing from grades 6 to 12 to grades 7 to 12.
"Over the course of the two years we have reduced a grade level at Penhold elementary and Penhold crossing and added two grade levels at Jessie Duncan," said Russell.
In the meantime, said Russell, there are plans to add a 600-student capacity middle school in Penhold, according to Chinook's Edge's recently approved capital plan. He added the new school, which ranks fourth on the capital plan's priority list after proposed projects for elementary students in Carstairs, a new elementary school in Olds, and the modernization of H. J. Cody School in Sylvan Lake, would replace Penhold Elementary School.
