Following the creation of a committee tasked with addressing the issue of school crowding in the southern part of Chinook's Edge School Division (CESD), it has been revealed that population growth is an issue throughout the region, say officials.
Kurt Sacher, superintendent of CESD, said the division is seeing growth rates of about 100 students per year across the division's schools, and the trend shows no signs of slowing.
Carstairs, Sylvan Lake and Penhold are the most critical towns needing attention, but he noted that the other larger centres such as Olds and Didsbury have also been seeing steady, albeit slower growth.
Penhold Crossing Secondary School – a new grade 7-12 school – was opened in Penhold this year, but those spaces have quickly filled up, he noted.
“We had talked to government about that for years, that we needed that school built and we needed it on time, and they satisfied us on both counts,” said Sacher.
“We got a really good school, got it on time, and it's becoming populated very quickly to the point where we're going to need more space in the Penhold area. We're still going to end up filling the new school in the not-too-distant future.”
Sylvan Lake is a high priority on the CESD Capital Plan, with Sylvan Lake's C.P. Blakely School already home to four portable classrooms, although the town recently got approval for a new school to be built, he noted.
“There's a lot of growth coming up through the younger grades in Sylvan Lake. So then the high school becomes our target area for our next request to handle the growth,” he said.
And Carstairs Elementary School (CES) is already feeling the crunch, with the largest intake of kindergarten students ever, totalling about 100, and a total of about 30 additional students when compared to enrolment numbers from the last school year, according to CES officials.
One of the issues in dealing with Alberta Infrastructure – which is a major source of funding for construction of schools – is that generally all the available student spaces in a town need to be filled before a request will be granted for a new school, he said.
“You've got a lot of people that would like to see the K-3 configuration at (CES) continue, as would we – it's definitely desirable. It's for our government that looks across the province and they see empty spaces at (Carstairs' Hugh Sutherland School) and they would like those filled typically before they provide resources.”
Although if the population continues to grow, in about three years Carstairs will not have enough spaces for all the students there, he said.
“It will be really uncomfortable after that time frame, and it's already at the point of concern at the elementary school where they're overcapacity.”
After that, in the years to follow, that crowding will spill into Hugh Sutherland School, which will exacerbate the problem if it has not been addressed by that time.
Sacher's comments were made after the recent announcement by Premier Jim Prentice that the provincial government plans to spend about $2 billion for 55 new schools and 20 modernizations, with the majority of the projects scheduled to open by September 2017.
"We had talked to government about that for years, that we needed that school built and we needed it on time, and they satisfied us on both counts."Kurt Sachersuperintendent Chinook's Edge
