Future options to be discussed for Drayton Valley schools

“Unfortunately they (Alberta Education) don’t fund us for plant operations and maintenance based on our square footage,” he notes. “They fund us based on our student count and we have been declining in enrolment over the past decade with our numbers and rural Alberta in general. Unless you’re right alongside the Highway 2 corridor, you tend to be experiencing a decline across the province in school divisions.”

As a result, Volkman says they need to consider whether they need all of those buildings in the future, so he anticipates a public meeting to take place Nov. 4 regarding potential plans moving forward.

“With some of the structural issues we’re having at H.W. Pickup and the kind of money we’re having to put into that building right now even though it’s newer, we still have to consider what the long-term life of that school building should be,” explains Volkman. “Also, because Eldorado is an older elementary school and we’re opening a newer elementary school, that’s part of what that meeting will be on November 4, is to kind of look at the long-term. How many schools do we need effectively and if we were going to have less, which ones should they be?”

In the meantime, Volkman notes work is progressing well and on schedule for the new Evergreen replacement school in Drayton Valley, with its anticipated opening by January of 2021.

“We’ve just let the board know that we’ve got to start making decisions this year for things like ordering furniture and how we’re going to staff that school,” says Volkman. “Who is going to be the principal of that school and some of those things will start happening in the new year here in January and February when we start making some of those decisions and getting information out on that as well.”

However, things such as grade configuration and how to go about moving into that school once finished, are yet to be determined adds Volkman.

“It’s being built for 250 (students) but we probably wouldn’t get it right full to 250,” admits Volkman. “I’m thinking we could probably get a couple hundred students in there early on. But as far as grades go, it’s being built as an elementary school.”

Volkman says some of the discussions that need to take place include what to do with Eldorado School.

“When we open up the new Evergreen School, we won’t need all the spaces elsewhere in the division and Eldorado School would be our oldest elementary school,” he explains. “We’ll just have to discuss with the public, do we leave some students at Eldorado or do we move all of them from Eldorado?”

As it stands now, Volkman says there are 276 students at Eldorado School, so they wouldn’t all fit at the new Evergreen replacement school, which has yet to be officially named either.

“But Aurora Elementary could take on a few more, so we’re just going to present a few different scenarios in November and get some feedback from the community,” adds Volkman. “But for grade configurations, I would say safely, it will either be Kindergarten to Grade 4 or Kindergarten to Grade 5. But we’ll have to take a look and see, we’re still crunching the numbers.”

by Sheldon Spackman

Future options to be discussed for Drayton Valley schools

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