Rocky View Schools (RVS) Board of Trustees awarded a major project to complete an addition to Herons Crossing School to Delnor Construction 2012 Ltd. at its June 2 meeting. The winning bid was $9.2 million and is pending approval from Alberta Infrastructure.
The budget for the project set by Alberta Education was $15.7 million, of which $13.5 million was earmarked for building construction. All eight bids received as part of the tendering process were well under this budgeted amount.
“This economy is showing that the tenders are significantly under what the original budget was a year ago,” RVS Superintendent of Business and Operations Darrell Couture said in referring to the downturn in Alberta’s economy.
The addition will see the school’s capacity increase to approximately 900 students, up from 500, including modular classrooms.
“I think it’s a great win for Herons Crossing to actually become a full-size school rather than a half-school, a baby school, which this board had to build in a time when the Province was not providing facilities to keep up with our tremendous growth,” Board Chair Colleen Munro said.
Trustees approved a recommendation from staff to keep student instructional resource fees at the current level when the 2016/17 school year starts in September. These fees allow schools to purchase supplies and materials students need as they go through the school year.
The current rates are $25 per child in kindergarten, $105 per child for grades one to eight and $145 per child for grades nine to 12.
“Fees have remained at these levels for the past five years,” Superintendent of Schools Don Hoium said.
Board Trustee Todd Brand said he wished RVS didn’t need to charge fees for a public school education.
“I’m eagerly awaiting news from our provincial government that promised the elimination of school fees but instead decided to study school fees,” he said. “I’m going to support the motion but I really hope we see the elimination of school fees by the start of the school year.”
Bev LaPeare, who is the trustee for Ward 2, which includes Chestermere, Langdon and Indus, said she would not be supporting the motion because the schools in her ward are configured differently. Grade nine students remain with their grades six to eight counterparts with high school being grades 10 to 12.
“I feel that, because of that, the grade nines in my area should have been paying the same amount as the grade one to eights,” she said.
The motion passed with only LaPeare voting against it.
