In a televised address Tuesday night, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said the provincial government will be quadrupling the amount of capital money going towards elementary and high school construction over the next three years via a new program called the School Construction Accelerator Program. The province has grown exponentially – more than 200,000 people moved to the province last year.
The addition of over 6 billion dollars in capital funding would be a huge boost to what was budgeted in February. This year’s budget originally earmarked 1.9 billion dollars in capital funding over the next three years for planning, design or construction of new and modernized school projects across the province.
Earlier this summer, the government promised an added 215 million dollars for school boards, including $90 million towards 100 more modular classrooms that are expected to be delivered by the end of the calendar year. The province’s two largest divisions, Edmonton Public Schools and the Calgary Board of Education, have both said their schools are expected to have a utilization rate of well over 90 per cent this school year.
Under the accelerator program, a one-time funding boost will see $8.6 billion spent on new school spaces and modernizations, as well as on portables. Municipalities that have seen big population growth, such as Calgary, Edmonton, Rocky View County and other growing mid-sized cities, were asked to make getting schools built the number one focus.
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