While the Chinook's Edge School division will not be getting any of the 55 new schools announced by the province last week, officials are pleased with new maintenance funding announced at the same time, says superintendant Kurt Sacher.
Chinook's Edge's portion of the new funding will be about $1.4 million.
“We are very pleased with the funding increase,” Sacher told the Gazette. “What it means to us is significant because we really had a decimated budget in our facilities department. When you have less budget for those areas, you prioritize, you deal with the roofs but you don't deal with a lot of the other stuff that still needs to get done.”
Chinook's Edge division corporate secretary Al Tarnoczi recently said there is a growing need for maintenance dollars in the division.
“We are stretched as far as facilities dollar go to repairing the buildings,” said Tarnoczi. “I think we are keeping up with all of the urgent items, for example the envelope (building structures) kinds of things, but it's no surprise to anyone who has been in our schools that many of our buildings are looking tired and that they need a good thorough going over to spruce them up.”
On Oct. 8 Premier Prentice announced that $43 million in new funding is being made available for the construction 55 new schools and the modernization of 20 others. Chinook's Edge will not be receiving any of that new funding.
However, Sacher says the division is hopeful that the recent funding announcement means Chinook's Edge will now be moving up the list for future projects.
“We are trying to be optimistic by them addressing the next batch of needs that that will create a vacuum that will actually help us down the road, where we won't be waiting as long as we were set up to be waiting,” said Sacher.
“We are hopeful that what will happen is that because they are catching up on a major backlog, is that that will put us in a much stronger position to get the needs that we have met in a really timely fashion.”
Chinook's Edge is in need of new and modernized schools in several communities, he said.
“We definitely need new spaces in the Carstairs area. In Penhold we are very concerned that even with the new school, which was built on time and we are very pleased with the new school, it will fill up in short order. At H.J. Cody, our high school in Sylvan Lake, modernization is one of our other priorities.”
