Alberta's education minister has stepped in to stickhandle construction of Morinville's new public school.
Morinville town councillors and the Sturgeon School Division met last Feb. 17 with Education Minister David Eggen at the Alberta legislature to get construction of the town's next public school back on track.
Progress on the roughly $25-million project ground to a halt last month due to the many problems with the school's site, located behind the Ray McDonald arena and curling rink. Those problems included power poles, a possible $1 million access road no one wanted to pay for, and the uncertain fate of the arena and curling rink.
That decision left parents frustrated, the school's future students homeless, and some $750,000 in planning dollars up in the air.
"Morinville is growing very rapidly, and we have to keep the best interests of the kids first and foremost," Eggen said after the meeting.
Eggen said he would work with Alberta Infrastructure and Alberta Transportation to resolve the many issues around the school site, which included safety concerns, road access, and finding space for students while the new school is under construction.
The planning dollars aren't going anywhere, he added.
"We just want to reassure everyone that this school will be built and the monies are available to do it in the most expeditious way."
Encouraging start
Sturgeon School Division superintendent MichÈle Dick said she was encouraged by Eggen's remarks.
"The minister said he was committed to the school and committed to the funding."
Morinville Mayor Lisa Holmes said she was grateful that Eggen had agreed to help co-ordinate all the different ministries working on this project.
"It's not easy for the Town of Morinville to just make the problems go away, or we would have done that months ago," she said.
"The problems are significant, and they require other levels (of government) like Alberta Transportation to come in."
Town, school, and provincial administrators will now meet to resolve those problems and will give council regular updates, Holmes said.
"Every one of us has the same goal in mind, and that's to get the school built."
One big sticking point is road access. If the school gets access onto 107th St., the added traffic could mean that the province has to upgrade that street's intersection with Hwy. 642 to a roundabout, Holmes explained.
"Those are not easy conversations."
Another is where to put students while the new school is being built. While the meeting touched on the idea of putting them in a temporary modular school on the school site, Dick said it would be extremely difficult to do so, given that there would be an active construction site next to it. The board is looking at several options, including adding more modulars to Morinville Public or housing students in different schools/buildings.
Holmes said Eggen was clear that modulars would be a two-to-three year solution at most and not a permanent one, and that they could be located on or off the proposed school site. While they discussed asking Sturgeon County if they could build the site on the new rec-centre lands, everyone at the meeting agreed to work with the current site for now, as it was the one that would get the school built the fastest.
"As a parent, I'm grateful the plan does not include busing my kids out of town," Holmes said.
Schools such as this one typically take 2.5 years to build, Eggen said. He hoped to get this one built as soon as possible.
