Public trustees vote to push Eggen for cash ahead of budget time

Edmonton public school trustees are so anxious about a looming shortage of high school space, they’re asking Alberta’s education minister for money immediately to start planning two new ones.

“This is one of the issues that keeps me up at night,” trustee Nathan Ip said while attempting to convince his school board colleagues to pass a motion urging Education Minister David Eggen to hand over extra cash.

The motion, passed unanimously at the board’s Tuesday meeting, asks Eggen for funds — they wouldn’t say how much — to plan two of the three new high schools the district wants to build within the next three years. Rather than wait until the minister next announces money for new school construction — often around provincial budget time — trustees will tell Eggen they simply can’t wait.

With public high schools at an average 85-per-cent capacity, district administrators project a glut of students currently in elementary will fill existing high schools by 2021. The district also believes it will need buildings for 8,000 additional high school students by 2025. That’s about four large high schools.

In the most recent provincial budget, Eggen committed about $80 million for three new Edmonton public schools during the next few years, including a modernization and consolidation of three schools into Highlands Junior High, a new elementary school in McConachie, and a new junior high in the Meadows. Across Alberta, 26 new school design, modernization and construction projects received approval and funding in the 201718 provincial budget.

Deciding which Alberta schools to build, upgrade or replace works like this: Each of Alberta’s 61 school boards submits a list each spring to the education ministry of major construction proposals for the next three years.

The ministry looks at all the requests, along with information about safety problems, school crowding and growth projections, before deciding which projects to fund.

On Tuesday, Edmonton public trustees also approved their new three-year needs list. They unanimously voted to approve a new $79-million, 1,800-pupil high school in Heritage Valley as their top priority. A $28-million K-9 school in east Chappelle is the second priority, and in the third spot are replacement schools for one of three major school consolidations the district is attempting to arrange in older regions of Edmonton.

A new high school for southwest Edmonton in Glenridding, and a new high school for southeast Edmonton are in fifth and seventh priority order. The southeast high school is further down the list because the site doesn’t yet have utilities, superintendent Darrel Robertson said.

The district’s plan also includes requests to modernize Harry Ainlay, Queen Elizabeth and McNally high schools.

Trustees said they are often hearing from parents concerned about potentially lengthy commute times for their kids to attend high school.

Trustee Orville Chubb said that even if the district received funding to build three new high schools during the next three years, they would accommodate 5,400 students, which is short of the 8,000 more the district expects by 2025.

The district will shoehorn the rest into existing schools, adding desirable programs at more sparsely attended schools to attract students from other parts of the city, Robertson said.