Alberta government to build 6 schools in Calgary area, 5 in Edmonton
CBC
The construction of 11 new schools in Edmonton and the Calgary region will happen through public-private partnerships, the provincial government says.
Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides is set to publicly announce Saturday afternoon that the government will spend money on five new schools in Edmonton, three in Calgary and one each in the cities of Airdrie and Chestermere and the town of Okotoks — three communities near Calgary.
Releasing money as soon as construction plans and sites are ready will help prevent projects from potentially losing a construction season, Nicolaides told CBC News earlier this week.
"We can build the schools faster, and that's our top priority because we have a lot of enrolment pressure," Nicolaides said. "We want to build the schools as quickly as we possibly can."
Premier Danielle Smith announced in September that the government is committing to accelerating construction and modernization of schools, in response to unprecedented enrolment growth across Alberta.
Saturday's anticipated pre-budget announcement is part of that work.
Funding for the 11 new school projects comes from a three-year, $2.1-billion commitment to construction spending the Alberta government announced in its 2024 budget, nearly a year ago.
The government also announced its School Construction Accelerator Program in September, through which it promised to spend another $8.6 million over seven years, starting in 2025, to build and facelift more schools.
In this case, a public-private partnership — or, P3 — occurs when a private company, or a consortium of several businesses, bids on building a bundle of school projects. The winning group designs, builds and pays for the construction. It also owns and maintains the building for 30 years before handing it over to the provincial government.
This approach allows the government to pay off the cost of the building, plus interest, over several decades.
Some school divisions, however, have previously said the quality of some P3 school sites and level of maintenance failed to meet their expectations.
The 11 new schools will be bundled into two contracts: one for the three high schools to be built in Calgary, Airdrie and Okotoks, and another for eight elementary-junior high schools in Edmonton, Calgary and Chestermere, according to a Friday email from Benji Smith, press secretary for Infrastructure Minister Pete Guthrie.
The elementary-junior high schools should be constructed by 2028, Smith said, and the high schools could possibly be built by 2029.
School divisions have had to figure out how to accommodate thousands more students arriving in Alberta in recent years. Provincial data suggests enrolment grew nearly four per cent from the 2022-23 school year to 2023-24.
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