Construction to be fast-tracked for west Calgary Catholic high school project
A long-awaited Catholic high school in west Calgary is one step closer to being built.
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Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides announced the third funding stream for the province's School Construction Accelerator Program (SCAP) in Aspen Woods on Wednesday, including two projects that will benefit the Calgary Catholic School District.
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The projects receiving funding through the latest round of SCAP include construction of a new Catholic high school in west Calgary, and design-related work for the modernization and expansion of Bishop McNally High School in Falconridge.
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'There has been a lot of commentary from parents in west Calgary about the need for a new high school,' Nicolaides told Postmedia ahead of his announcement. 'This project has now moved through the design phase and is ready to begin construction, so we'll be able to provide construction funding to the school division so the project can start to move ahead right away.'
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Parent advocates have long called on the provincial government to fund a Catholic high school in west Calgary. Currently, Catholic high school students in the southwest attend St. Mary's High School in the Beltline, which can involve nearly an hour's commute each way.
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'It's a long commute time, and I do know for a lot of families in the neighbourhood, they'd obviously prefer to have their kids attend school closer to home,' Nicolaides said. 'A lot of them switch and enrol into the public system, (with) Ernest Manning as their designated high school, which cascades and creates other capacity issues.'
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The new grades 10-12 school will be built at 1579 93rd Street S.W., on the western edge of the city limits, and is expected to open in 2028, states the CCSD's website, which doesn't specify when construction will begin.
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On the opposite corner of the city, the Bishop McNally modernization project will expand the campus to handle a capacity of 1,880 students, according to the province's major projects portal.
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'It is a top project for the school division and we're now able to move it to the design phase, which is a really important stage,' Nicolaides said. 'The school division can really start mapping out what that addition is going to look like and how the space is going to be modernized.'
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Shannon Cook, chair of the CCSD's board of trustees, said the division is grateful to see two of its highest-priority high-school projects receive funding through SCAP.
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'With our student population growing rapidly and our high schools already over capacity, these new builds and modernizations/additions are critical to ensuring our students have access to quality, Catholic education close to home,' she said in a statement.
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SCAP is an $8.6-billion program that aims to address Alberta's growing student enrolment pressures in the K-to-12 education system, brought on by the province's recent surge in population.
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As evidence of a worsening space crunch, more than one-third of public schools in Calgary are now operating at or above a 100 per cent utilization rate.
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'This growth in population has been quite quick and quite sudden over the past couple years, and it's put significant pressure on our schools,' Nicolaides said. 'That's why we're stepping up to the plate and announcing our plan to invest $8.6 billion to build and renovate more than 100 schools to help address the space needs of our school divisions. There's no question there's a lot of demand and pressure out there.'
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For SCAP's next funding stream, 11 previously announced school projects will receive either design or construction funding.
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In addition to the two Calgary projects, Nicolaides said the province will allocate money for school projects in Coalhurst, Donnelly, Falher, Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie County, Lac La Biche, Red Deer, Strathmore and Wetaskiwin. The Strathmore project includes design funding for a replacement of Westmount School.
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When complete, the projects will create more than 8,000 new and updated student spaces.
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'Most of the projects we're moving forward are outside of Calgary and Edmonton this round,' Nicolaides said. 'That helps other communities around the province recognize and understand that we're trying to achieve both goals; building space in our fast-growing communities while also ensuring we have the highest quality infrastructure as possible in some of our smaller communities.'
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