Lethbridge School Division officials are encouraged by the Government of Alberta’s commitment to boost the amount of capital money towards Kindergarten to Grade 12 school construction in the province.
The Alberta Government is set to spend $8.6 billion over the next three years on building schools to help battle current and potentially future capacity issues across schools in Alberta.
The Division, like many across Alberta, is experiencing enrolment pressures in many of its schools, particularly in fast-growing areas of the city. As such, the Division’s top three new-construction requests include a west Lethbridge elementary school in the south, a west Lethbridge high school and a north Lethbridge elementary school.
School modernizations for buildings such as Galbraith Elementary School are also top priorities for the Division. “Which is currently in design funding,” says Christine Lee, the Division’s associate superintendent of Business and Operations.
According to the Government of Alberta’s recent announcement, when the design is ready, “they will fast track the approval of construction,” adds Lee.
“Lethbridge is a growing city and that does bring challenges for our schools dealing with high utilization rates, particularly on the westside,” notes Lee. “Any support we can receive from the provincial and municipal governments to expediate the process of building new schools is certainly welcomed.”
Lee says west Lethbridge is expected to grow by just over two per cent by 2026.
“We have put in our capital plan for a request for the two school constructions. We’re hoping in Budget 2025, we’ll receive planning funds for those two projects. The requirements we do need to accomplish before we can go any further is we need to find a site and start the process to develop that site, so it’s ready to take on construction for a new school,” says Lee.
The Division and the City of Lethbridge will discuss potential sites for new schools. “And hopefully receive planning funds from the government, so we can really start to move on.”
According to the Government of Alberta, the “School Construction Accelerator Program” will help provide 50,000 new student spaces over three years, with an additional 150,000 new spaces created in the four years after that.
In addition to the one-time influx of education spending to build schools, the province will be pushing to have portables in place sooner as a stop-gap solution to overcrowding, as the construction period gets underway.
