‘A real urgency’: Edmonton celebrates new public school, but officials say 50 more are needed

Hundreds of students in southeast Edmonton will attend a brand-new public high school Thursday, but officials with the division say 50 more need to be built in the next decade.

“There’s a real urgency and I think the numbers tell a very strong story,” Edmonton Public Schools Board Chair Julie Kusiek told reporters Monday.

She made the comments during a media tour of Elder Dr. Francis Whiskeyjack School, next door to the Meadows Community Recreation Centre.

The school can hold up to 2,400 students, but that’s only a fraction of the 6,600 new students Edmonton Public Schools has this year, with 100 more arriving each week.

Elder Dr. Francis Whiskeyjack is the only new school opening in Edmonton and Calgary this fall, and one of just five opening across Alberta.

In Calgary, that means modular classrooms. A public school official confirmed Monday that 47 are on the way and 11 are being moved to address “the most critical enrolment pressures.”

“While the modulars will not be in place for the first day of school, schools are used to making adjustments to respond to annual and in-year changes in enrolment,” Joanne Anderson, a spokesperson for the Calgary Board of Education, told CityNews.

“Once the modulars are in place, schools make additional adjustments to best use the new spaces.”

In Edmonton, public schools are set to hit 90 per cent utilization this year, an increase of 19 per cent since 2013. In all, 38 schools are at or above 100 per cent capacity, and another 81 are at 80 per cent or higher.

Kusiek said until more schools are built, students and parents can expect more kids in each class, longer bus rides as they spread out students, and fewer childcare facilities inside schools because teachers need those spaces.

“You may end up at a lottery school which means you don’t get in and then you go to the designated overflow school. It may also mean having a math class in a foods lab,” she explained.

The Opposition NDP says the government is failing to properly fund new school construction and calls modulars a “band-aid” solution.

The UCP celebrated the opening of another school in Leduc Monday. There are five in total for Alberta this year, but the government claims 98 more are in the works.

“More people are choosing to make Alberta their home and that means K-12 schools are seeing rising enrollment. We are making record investments in education to accommodate this growth,” Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides wrote in a statement to CityNews.

“Since 2019, we have committed to 60 school projects between the Calgary Metropolitan Region and Edmonton Metropolitan Region to add more than 54,000 new and modernized student spaces. In addition to the school projects, we are investing in 157 new modular classrooms.”

The first day of classes for many Alberta kids, including Edmonton and Calgary public school students, is this Thursday.