Two St. Albert schools have teamed up this week to use gourmet food to raise cash for a playground.
About 100 Muriel Martin and Bellerose Composite parents and students are expected to attend the first Bellerose Business Venture dinner of the 2015/2016 season this Thursday.
The Bellerose Business Venture is a for-profit student-run business that cooks gourmet meals for the community.
In a new twist, Thursday's dinner will be a joint venture between Bellerose and Muriel Martin, with profits from it split between the two schools.
While the Business Venture team has previously done charitable work through the Kids with Cancer Foundation, this is the first time that it's partnered with another school, said Jason Dabbagh, the team's teacher adviser.
Muriel Martin principal Les Kirchner said he approached Dabbagh last May about having the Bellerose team cook a dinner for Muriel Martin parents. Dabbagh came up with the idea of doing a fundraiser for the school's new playground.
Kirchner said that the event would likely raise about $500 for the playground. They've already raised about $120,000 for the project and expect to start construction next spring.
Instead of the formal multi-course affairs of past dinners, Dabbagh said this week's event will be more like Edmonton's Heritage Days, where guests will get tickets they can redeem for one of 10 different dishes served at stations throughout the school. Team members have been paired up and are each responsible for a different dish, which should give them more chances to develop their cooking skills.
Thursday's menu includes short ribs, cream of carrot ginger soup, salted caramel crÈme brûlée, and Thai green curry with chicken on coconut cinnamon rice.
The dinner runs from 5 to 7 p.m. at Bellerose. Tickets are $40, and may be available at the door. Call Muriel Martin Elementary at 780-458-0205 to confirm availability.
Cyber is so passé
Goodbye "storefront" and so long "cyber" – St. Albert's Catholic storefront school is now officially a high school.
The Greater St. Albert Catholic School board voted Monday to officially change the name of St. Gabriel Storefront School to St. Gabriel High School. They also re-named the St. Gabriel Cyber School to Greater St. Albert Catholic iLearn.
St. Gabriel is the Catholic board's distance learning school and is based out of an office near the St. Albert Sobey's.
The board combined the storefront and cyber-schools about seven years ago under the cumbersome title of "St. Albert Storefront School and St. Gabriel Cyber School," said principal David Feist.
That got shortened to "St. Gabriel Storefront School," but that was confusing to some, as the school wasn't just about outreach classes and wasn't just online.
"Some people don't view a storefront or a cyber school as real schools," Feist said, even though students have to write the same diploma exams as any others.
The nature of the school had also changed since it was created 20 years ago, noted assistant superintendent David Quick in his report to the board. Instead of dropping in every few weeks to pick up course-work, St. Gabriel students now attend the school daily. The Cyber School program now has a significant offline component in the form of in-person seminars, and is mostly used by students who aren't enrolled in the storefront school.
Students wanted to graduate from a high school, and felt that the word "cyber" was out of date, said Catholic superintendent David Keohane.
"It's really a matter of keeping up with the times."
St. Gabriel's 400-some students and the school's website have been unofficially using the new name since spring, Feist said.
