Fourteen years after it was built, the Rocky View Schools Education Centre, located on Chinook Winds Drive in Airdrie, will receive some updating this summer through funding that was previously allocated prior to the pandemic.  

When the facility was built in 2007, there were 37 schools with an enrollment of over 15,000.  Since that time, RVS has grown by leaps and bounds to where there are currently 51 schools with about 10,000 more students attending.  The Education Centre needs important updates, including enhancing safety considerations for the reception desk, additional storage space, increasing the size and flexibility of some meeting rooms and reducing open areas of the foyer space and replacing them with other work and meeting rooms.

Prior to the pandemic work on the foyer had been done with the designs about 80 percent complete.  However, COVID-19 hit and the work was put on hold while RVS attended to more 'immediate' challenges. By the start of the 2021-2022 school year, RVS anticipates being able to have in-person meetings for staff, administration and the Board.  As life begins to return to, what RVS is calling, 'a new-normal,' the renovation once again becomes a priority.

Superintendent Greg Luterbach says the work will hopefully be completed over the summer months but says, like everything else for the school division since the pandemic started, it will be a "challenging time."

"We are hoping construction can start sort of the middle of June and then we would like the construction to be done by the end of August.  Renovations don't always go on schedule so we'll have some contingency plans but we want to have the bulk of the heavy lifting done over the summer when things are a little quieter around the Education Centre." 

The Board recently approved the use of up to $1.4 million, with the money coming from capital reserves for the project.  Until the tender for construction is close, and bids are reviewed, the actual cost won't be known for certain.  The preliminary budget is in the realm of $850,000 to $1.4 million.  Why is there a $550,000 difference between the low-side and the high-side?  Luterbach says there are two reasons for that.

"One: construction materials themselves are significantly higher and have increased in price over the last two years.  The second part is, when you're dealing with a project like this, we don't know how much interest we'll get from contractors.  We'll go out to tender and, of course, try to get the very best price we can but often when you have a lot of different contractors bidding on work, often that can drive the price down.  It's a little uncertain, given the pandemic, how much interest there'll be in the project."

Right now RVS has $6.5 million in capital reserves with $775,000 within that total allocated specifically for the renovation of the Education Centre and $650,000 in maintenance reserves not specifically allocated to a future capital purchase.  Those two amounts will cover the high-end of the estimated total.  

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