Students in kindergarten to Grade 2 were able to take classes at Cochrane’s new RancheView School in September and now the rest of their classmates will join them at the new facility Oct. 12.
“This is a good news story,” said Rocky View Schools (RVS) Superintendent of Schools Greg Luterbach.
“Across the community there was disappointment when we weren’t going to be able to open the school in time for September.”
RVS had originally planned a phased occupancy of the new school once informed by Alberta Infrastructure in March the school would not be completed in time for the new school year.
The phased approach saw students in kindergarten to Grade 2 occupy the completed part of the school when classes began Sept. 1, with students in grades 3 to 7 being housed at Mitford School until moving over to RancheView School in January 2017 when construction was completed.
“We continued to work with Alberta Infrastructure to put pressure on the contractor to get the building ready and it was very good news when Alberta Infrastructure contacted us back and said, ‘You know what? We’re going to be ready sooner than January,’” Luterbach said.
“We have been working in the building in early September getting the building ready.
Then it was a matter of picking the time (to open). We wanted to get all those 275 grades 3 to 7 students back in their home school as soon as possible.”
Luterbach said staff rallied together to get information out to parents as soon as possible after the division learned the school could fully open in mid-October.
“We appreciate it’s relatively short notice for families but we’re hoping the good news of a brand new facility and getting all of our learners together in RancheView will outweigh some of the logistical challenges over a couple of weeks,” he said.
RVS sent all parents a letter outlining the transition plan – and particularly information about busing – on Sept. 23. Parents are encouraged to contact RVS if they have any questions.
“I can tell you that our letters about transportation did go out – we had those finished by the end of (Sept. 26) and in the mail in Cochrane,” Luterbach said.
Parents were given information about where their children would be catching the bus to go to RancheView School, what time to expect the bus and whether or not they qualified for busing.
The portables currently housing the RancheView students at Mitford School will be reallocated, according to Luterbach.
“We have some of those portables that are destined (to go) out to Langdon School,” he said. “Cochrane Christian Academy had kind of moved within Mitford to accommodate the RancheView students…some of their classes are going to move into the portables. We’re going to need to look at the rest of those portables in terms of our modular classroom needs of the entire division.”
The provincial government in April 2013 announced construction of RancheView School in Cochrane’s Sunset Ridge community.
This isn’t the first time construction of the school was delayed. It was delayed by a year after the Province announced in June 2014 it would abandon the public-private partnership funding model (P3) it had been using to build new schools.
Canada’s Economic Action Plan describes a P3 as a public-private partnership in which the government continues to own the infrastructure assets, while the private sector plays a larger role in their design, construction, operation and maintenance.
In doing so, the private sector assumes a greater share of project risks, which gives incentives to the private sector partner to deliver projects on time and on budget.
- with files from Joel Dryden
