Province to spend $8.6 billion to build up to 30 new schools
Education minister says plan will help system meet rapid population growth
The Alberta government says it will spend $8.6 billion over the next seven years to build as many as 30 new schools and create 200,000 more student spaces across the province.
Premier Danielle Smith announced the plan in a televised address on Tuesday evening, calling it a “one-time capital investment” in the province's school system.
The new construction accelerator program also calls for up to eight schools to be modernized or replaced every year for the next three years.
“This is quite literally the fastest and largest build our province can manage given available construction workforce capacity and the time it takes to permit, prepare and service available school sites,” she said.
Up to 20,000 new student spaces will also be made available through modular classrooms over the next four years.
The program will begin through the next provincial budget in the first months of 2025.
The premier added a portion of the funding will be used for a parallel pilot project called the “charter school accelerator program” that the government says will add 12,500 new charter school student spaces over the coming four years.
Smith told Postmedia the province plans to cover the costs of the program by taking on debt via long-term loans.
It also plans to change the funding mechanism in several respects, primarily by owning the new schools outright and leasing them back to school boards. That would allow the province to list the new facilities as assets in its budget rather than the current practice of providing the boards with grants to build new facilities.
The program will also allow school projects to be approved at any point in the budget year, whereas now projects are typically only approved to progress from one stage of the construction process to the next at the start of a budget cycle.
“There is no time to lose in getting our school construction accelerator program off the ground right now,” Smith said.
`INCREDIBLE PRESSURE ON OUR SCHOOL DIVISIONS'
Both the premier and Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides cited the province's recent rapid population growth as necessitating the push for school construction.
The province added a record 200,000 new Albertans last year, equating to a 4.4 per cent growth in population, by far the highest of any province.
Over the past decade, Alberta's population has grown from just over four million in 2014 to 4.8 million this year.
“That's putting some incredible pressure on our school divisions,” Nicolaides said in an interview. “We are adding about 30,000 students a year and this plan will help us keep pace with that level of projected growth for the next few years.”
He said the new schools will come in areas that have seen the biggest population growth, primarily Edmonton and Calgary, but also listed Grande Prairie and Fort Mcmurray.
He said the modernization part of the program will largely fall to smaller communities.
The “vast majority” of new schools will be in public, Catholic and francophone school systems, Nicolaides said.
`EAGER TO GET STARTED'
In her address, Smith called on school boards to work with municipalities on getting permits and sites prepared for construction work.
School boards will continue to submit their capital requirements to the province for evaluation. Projects begin in the planning stage, followed by the design stage and conclude with construction itself.
Nicolaides said there is no timeline for work to begin yet, but that the plan is for construction to begin promptly.
“It really depends on how quickly the sites are ready and how quickly the projects are ready, but we're eager to get started as quickly as possible,” he said.
He said he's yet to receive feedback on the program from school boards, stating “we're just having those conversations now.”