By Sheldon Spackman

Hunting Hills Top Priority

Red Deer Public trustees identify top capital priorities

Mar 14, 2022 | 4:12 PM

The Board of Trustees for Red Deer Public Schools has identified its top priorities for the 2023-2026 Three Year Capital Plan.

Priorities include:

• The modernization with addition at Hunting Hills (building envelope, mechanical, electrical, and functional)
• New Grade 6-8 school in northeast Red Deer, 600 spaces
• The modernizations of Gateway Christian School, Oriole Park Elementary, Glendale Sciences and Technology, and Eastview Middle School
• New Grade 9-12 high school in northeast Red Deer, 1,000 spaces

The Division’s Three Year Capital Plan must be submitted to Alberta Education no later than March 31, 2022.

Officials note, the priorities planned in the new submission will be similar to those submitted on Mar. 10, 2021, with the exception of one change, that being the modernization of Fairview Elementary School (architectural, mechanical, electrical, and functional).

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That project, according to officials, will be removed and replaced by the modernization of Oriole Park Elementary School (full mechanical and electrical, architectural, and functional) to become the fourth priority.

Through the use of Infrastructure Maintenance and Renewal (IMR) funding for the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school year, district officials say they were able to address the majority of the work required to bring Fairview Elementary School up to near fully modernized to be able to remove it from the Capital Plan. Over the next few years the remaining projects are expected to be completed using IMR funding.

The Board of Trustees is required to establish the order of priorities among all of its projects. It was recommended that the modernization with addition of Hunting Hills High School remain as the highest priority, to allow for a 2025 completion date.

According to RDPSD officials, Three-Year Capital Plans include the following that should be noted:

• The Capital Plans are a list of capital priorities that the Board would like the provincial government to fund. They are a “wish list” submitted to the Government for consideration in its infrastructure planning process. The government decides which projects are approved for funding and when they will go ahead.
• The division does not receive annual funding that it can use to construct new schools or do major renovations to an existing school. If projects do not receive approval from the provincial government, the school division cannot move forward with construction.
• While the plans are referred to as a Three-Year, that does not mean that all, or any, of the projects will actually be approved or completed within that timeframe. Sometimes it takes many years for a project to be approved, even if it is ranked at the top of the division’s Capital Plan.
• The division is required to rank all of the projects, but that does not mean that the projects will proceed in that order. For instance, a modernization project, which is a renovation of an existing facility, may move forward before the construction of a new school. This could be due to a variety of factors, including cost. As well, it is possible for priorities to shift, particularly if there are emergent issues that increase or decrease the urgency of a particular project.

Currently, Red Deer Public Schools has 21 school facilities in its inventory with many of them constructed prior to the 1980’s.