Future Bow Valley High School (BVHS) students may see twice as large of a graduating class as their predecessors.
Rocky View Schools will be submitting its latest capital plan to the Alberta government at the end of the month, and among the priorities include an expansion building for BVHS.
“When Bow Valley was first constructed, it was really constructed as Phase 1. Now, 18 years later, it’s time to add Phase 2 because of the amount of students we’re going to be seeing in the high school (level),” said Colette Winter,
“In order to ensure there is space for the students that are coming up in Cochrane, we need to add more school space, more capacity.”
Cochrane has roughly 3,288 RVS students in elementary and middle schools currently, according to the various schools’ websites.
Presently, there are only two RVS high schools - Cochrane High School, with about 801 students and BVHS, with 625.
The BVHS expansion will essentially mirror the current school in terms of facility resources including a new gymnasium, CTS space and more classrooms.
“Phase 1 is 700 students and we’re looking at adding equal capacity in phase 2,” Winter said, adding the details of the plan, including specific designs won’t be made until RVS receives approval from the Alberta government.
Winter said because the land is already owned by RVS and available it’s more beneficial to add an expansion rather than building a new school.
RVS has coincided the request for an expansion with a request to modernize the current school building, which will be around 20 years old by the time construction begins.
“We’ll make sure it doesn’t look disjointed, that it all becomes one school. So it may mean that we’re having to change some learning spaces,” Winter said.
She added BVHS won’t see any construction begin any earlier than 2021 and a completion date would not be until at least a year or two after that.
Rocky View Schools has included an application to build a kindergarten to Grade 5 school in Heartland among its capital priorities.
The province said priorities identified by school boards in their three-year capital plans are considered and prioritized based on factors such as building condition, utilization rates, enrolment projections, site readiness and more.
“In determining provincial priorities for school projects, the government uses information provided in school authorities’ capital plans, as locally elected school boards are in the best position to evaluate the needs of the communities they serve,” said Lindsay Harvey, press secretary for the minister of education.
An estimated cost for the project has not yet been determined.
