Rocky View Schools are planning a consultation meeting in January 2019 to discuss an all too familiar problem in the division.  Huge growth in a community and a school that is nearing its capacity of students.

Heloise Lorimer, a K to grade 8 school located in the King's Heights area of Airdrie is very close to being filled to capacity, even with the addition of six portables last fall.  RVS Board Chair Todd Brand says it's due to the massive growth in the city's southeast quadrant.  

"I'd probably say, it's roughly 60 students away from being at capacity.  That area continues to grow, there's a lot of development of housing that's going on that's adding to those numbers on a very rapid basis."

Brand says the other two K - 8 schools on the east side of the QEII, R.J. Hawkey and Meadowbrook School are also well used at 75 and 72 percent capacity respectively.  Brand now says the division must decide on what to do with the attendance areas of the three schools at the consultation meeting since of all the growth area in the southeast quadrant is designated to go to Heloise Lorimer. 

Brand says in an ideal world, the division would simply build a new school to accommodate the growth.  That is, as we all know from Rocky View's efforts to attain new schools, just not that easy.

"The solution that would obviously be a preferred solution would be to get the new school for that area.  We do have a site but that site is not yet serviced so until the city and developer actually service that site, we can't even ask for a school on that location."

According to Brand staff at the division are coming up with various alternatives to present to parents and stakeholders at the meeting.  When they have that list of alternatives together, it will be presented to the board prior to the meeting.  Brand thinks RVS needs to look at which pockets of people that are designated now or will be designated in the future to attend Heloise Lorimer could potentially be moved and what grade levels.

"We always have the chance to take a look at grade levels and see if there's any potential of changing the grade configuration if that helps.  I'm sure staff will come to us with that,  Just to be fair, we have not seen the list of options just yet so it's a little hard for me to speak on what those look like until staff presents them, first to the board and then to the public."

Brand says RVS wants to keep the students on the east side of Airdrie so they obviously want to fill the unused space at R.J. Hawkey and Meadowbrook.   

The meeting is set for 7:30 pm January 23rd and will take place at Meadowbrook School.  Brand says he's confident that division staff will explore and present all of the options to the public.  He also says the public consultation process is important. 

"In the past, our public has done an amazing job of speaking into the whole process of consultations.  At times there's not a lot of choices, there's not a lot of options, other times there are.  In every case, I have felt the Board of Trustees has done a really good job of just listening to what the public has to say.  Very often the public brings us some things we're not aware of and that's why we do the consultations.  We're not required to do a consultation on these, it's just that we've found it so useful and beneficial that we feel it is more than worthwhile when we're looking at boundary changes."

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