CBE seeks parents’ views to curb overcrowding
Board mulls boundary changes for schools, moving popular programs
With as many as 40 public schools in Calgary operating at more than 100 per cent capacity, parents will be asked to consider boundary changes and moving alternative programs as the system struggles with continued growth.
Officials with the Calgary Board of Education will set in motion a two-year engagement process to analyze data and enrolment projections in all quadrants, affecting all schools.
One of the biggest pressure points right now is high schools, with already crowded classrooms and overflowing middle schools set to feed into them in the coming years. A CBE report Tuesday revealed 40 schools are operating above 100 per cent capacity, with many of them in the middle and high school range.
Centennial High School is running at 122 per cent capacity, Sir Winston Churchill High School at 114 per cent, Ernest Manning at 118 per cent and Nelson Mandela at 110 per cent.
“The CBE is continuing to experience significant student growth,” said CBE chair Trina Hurdman.
“We grow by a little over 2,000 students per year, so to translate that to number of schools, we’re growing by about four elementary schools worth of students every year.”
The engagement process will roll out a number of options to balance enrolment growth, moving students out of overcapacity schools — many in suburban areas — into lower capacity schools such as Crescent Heights High School, James Fowler, Lord Beaverbrook and Bowness.
Boundary changes could affect elementary, middle and senior high schools, but changes could also involve the movement of increasingly popular alternative programs such as French immersion and Spanish bilingual.
Programming within high schools could also be affected, with the possible movement of International Baccalaureate or Advanced Placement programming.
Administrators also said they would not rule out limiting the number of credits high school students can earn before they graduate in an effort to reduce burgeoning class sizes.
“Right now, we’re looking at every option available, we haven’t determined the final scope of the project,” Hurdman said.
Numbers released by Alberta Education this summer showed as many as 45 to 47 students per class in several core high school courses across Calgary. The alarming 201718 data was posted in response to last spring ’s scathing auditor general report criticizing the province for failing to monitor class sizes in spite of more than $293 million in funding last year.
Core courses at the CBE showed class sizes as high as 47 students in Math 30-1 at Ernest Manning High School and Physics 30 at Crescent Heights High School, as well as 46 for Science 30 at Forest Lawn High School and 44 for Social Studies 30-1 at Robert Thirsk High School.
Engagement with parents, through school and community open houses, is expected to start sometime next year and continue through to 2020, with a decisive plan in place by October 2021 and implementation set for the fall of 2022. Schools that are operating at more than 100 per cent capacity are a significant margin above the 85 per cent the province deems acceptable.
“This highlights our continued need for new schools,” said Lisa Davis, trustee for Wards 6 and 7.
“We need to closely monitor our high school accommodation programs and ensure there’s a longterm plan in place to deal with growth, while also providing the programming that students want.”
Since 2015-16, the CBE has opened 28 new schools, but the majority are elementary and middle schools, meaning larger populations will be flooding into high schools in a matter of years.
Last year, enrolment increased 1.4 per cent, or 1,729 students from 2017 to 2018, the eleventh consecutive year enrolment has spiked at the CBE.
In addition to high schools, several elementary and middle schools are also facing overcapacity, including Crossing Park School in Martindale at 126 per cent capacity and Captain Nichola Goddard in Panorama Hills at 117 per cent capacity.