"Joy and relief" over Bow Valley High announcement, says Board Chair

There's joy and relief over the announcement that the urgently-needed expansion of the Bow Valley High School (BVHS) has been announced, says Fiona Gilbert, chair of the RVS board of trustees.

"We know that Bow Valley High School has been in critical need of additional space for a number of years now," says Gilbert. "With the significant population growth and enrolment growth, absolutely we really appreciate Alberta Education's recognition of this need in Cochrane."

She says details of the construction timelines have yet to be determined or whether it's going to be a P3 school or government-funded.

"I know that we have over the last year or so already done a little bit of pre-planning work with the anticipation and the hope that this announcement will be made."

She says there's been discussion at the school and community level on what should be included in the school's expansion and modernization.

"We are ahead of the game in that regard so that as soon as government does give us that direction, we can hit the ground running as far as putting the planning together for the look of the school."

She says Bow Valley High is rated by Alberta Education as having 784 student spaces and currently accommodates nearly 850. The division is projected the school to have a student population of over 1,000 by 2025. 

Gilbert says their hope is the capacity of the school will be doubled. 

"We are hoping that the expansion will at least add another 500 student spaces and can potentially be increased further with add-on modulars over the years."

Cochrane High is also at capacity.

"It will be continuing to grow with limited ability to add modulars on that space and expand that space, so there's going to need to be some additional discussion now that we have additional space on the Bow Valley side of Cochrane. There might be some kind of reconfiguration of designated schools for high school kids."

The land has already been purchased by the division for a third high school adjacent to the town's future Horse Creek Sports Park, but its development could be up to 10 years away, depending upon growth. Cochrane is the fastest-growing mid-sized community in the province.

"We know that people love to live here, and people love to raise families, and we want to be able to provide great opportunities and great spaces for our students to collaborate and be creative as they go through high school."

Airdrie-Cochrane MLA Peter Guthrie had made representation to Alberta Education minister Adrianna LaGrange twice on the need for the expansion and wasn't positive it was going to be in this year's budget.

"The feedback that I got was it's going to be in this budget or the next, so I continued to pursue it, but I was not 100 per cent confident that we were going to get it this time. I was extremely happy to find out it was one of the 15 being announced."

Expansion of BVHS was the division's number one priority. Annually, the division submits a list of top priorities for school developments to Alberta Education at the end of March. Third on their current list is a K-5 school in the Heartland community.