Construction delays pressure students
Crowding, hour-long bus rides may continue if schools held up
If a new public elementary school in Heritage Valley doesn’t open on time, student enrolment at Johnny Bright School in nearby Rutherford will continue to balloon.
And if a new Terwillegar Heights elementary-junior high school is delayed, students facing hour-long bus rides will have to keep busing for another year.
At Edmonton Catholic Schools, administrators still hope a new elementary-junior high school will open as planned in the fall of 2016 in west-Edmonton’s Lewis Farms area. It will relieve enrolment pressures at five neighbouring Catholic schools, where student numbers are already hitting 97-112 per cent of those buildings’ capacities, and space meant for art rooms, gyms and CTS (Career and Technology Studies) labs is commandeered for regular classes, said Boris Radyo, assistant superintendent of educational planning for Edmonton Catholic Schools.
Edmonton’s public and Catholic school districts are working with the province to get the schools done on time, despite this week’s government announcement some schools in a batch of 19 will be ready in 2017 instead of September 2016. The delay comes after government cancelled a plan to build the schools under a public-private partnership, commonly called a P3, because it’s cheaper for the government to manage the construction.
Among the 19 are two Edmonton public schools — Heritage Valley elementary at 975 Blackmud Creek Dr. SW, and Terwillegar Heights K-9 school at 4410 Mac Taggart Dr.—and one Edmonton Catholic school, the Lewis Farms K-9 school, on the northwest corner of Webber Greens Dr. and Lewis Greens Dr.
The design for the Lewis Farms Catholic school is finished and the site is ready and connected to city services, said Radyo. That school will mean shorter bus rides, especially for Catholic students in the far northwest areas of Trumpeter and Big Lakes. “Some of those students have ride times that vary between 32 to 78 minutes one way,” said Radyo.
Over at Johnny Bright School, enrolment is edging upward again despite changes the public school district implemented to control student numbers. Grade 8 and 9 kids were temporarily moved out of Johnny Bright School last fall to free up space for younger students, and another 218 kids are supposed to move to the new Heritage Valley school when it opens.
Enrolment at Johnny Bright is hovering around 1,000 kids and the school is already full, said Daxesh Dalal, vice-chair of Johnny Bright’s parent advisory council. “So we have a very small buffer for new kids to come in,” he said.
Enrolment pressure at Johnny Bright is the biggest concern, said Edmonton Public Schools managing director Lorne Parker. However, a delay opening Terwillegar Heights would mean some students continue with long bus rides to other schools, such as McKee Elementary School near Southgate Mall, Parker said.
“We remain hopeful that the schools will still be delivered earlier than 2017.”
Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson said he is disappointed at the delay and sympathizes with families waiting for the schools.
“It’s not as if we’re starting over with these projects because there’s been a lot of work done on them,” he said. “I think there’s still a good chance these can be expedited and built fairly quickly.”