Police, St. Albert area schools and social services agencies have joined forces to put the brakes on school violence.
The effort is focused on creating a rapid response team to anticipate and stop all forms of school violence, including threats, before they arise.
Sturgeon, St. Albert Public, Greater St. Albert Catholic and Greater North Central Francophone school divisions are now training staff with the hope of implementing protocols as early as September.
St. Albert Public superintendent Marianne Barrett said, "It's a collaborative way to look at early identification and support for students who are either making threats or are presenting worrisome behaviour.”
"The earlier we intervene ... the less likely we are to get to a situation where a lockdown is called," Barrett said.
The effort is timely. Last week there was a lockdown at one city school and several nearby schools were placed on hold and secure. Although there was no indication of imminent violence – city RCMP will only say multiple students said they had received suspicious messages – lockdowns are a source of uncertainty and anxiety for students, teachers and parents.
Anything that can be done to prevent such incidents improves student safety and reduces anxiety so students can focus on what they go to school for – learning.
Fire coverage
St. Albert city council has thrown its support behind replacing its oldest fire hall in a new location on Gate Avenue.The rebuild is long overdue. The plans to rebuild Fire Station #1 have been on hold since 2010. The station on Sir Winston Churchill Avenue has already had three renovations.
The move to replace Fire Station #1, now more than 60 years old, will allow the fire hall to better meet the needs of a growing city as it will be built with expansion plans in mind.
The site of the current fire hall is too small to allow for expansion and its facilities are long past their serviceable life. Rebuilding on a new site is expected to cost $12.01 million, which is about $1 million more than it would cost to re-modernize at the current site. Instead of periodically throwing money at an old building, the new building would serve the city up to at least the year 2050.
City Fire Chief Keven Lefebvre told councillors the site would also provide better access to the southern and eastern areas of St. Albert without affecting response times to downtown or central St. Albert.
St. Albert's Village Transit Station on Gate Avenue could be repurposed for a new fire hall if a rezoning of the station's land is approved later this year. The city plans to close Village Transit Station after the construction of the Campbell Road Park and Ride Transit Centre. The Village Transit Station land could become available in 2019 or 2020.
Building a new fire hall on the Village Transit Station land is a prudent decision, in both the interests of emergency preparedness and economics.
