Public school board hamstrung when it comes to City Plan, says chair
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Past decisions by the city and current decisions by the province are making it difficult for the school system to live up to the City Plan's vision of 15-minute districts, suggests the chair of the Edmonton Public School Board.
The City Plan envisions a "community of communities" with "housing, recreation, schools and employment in all of our districts" that are accessible through all forms of transportation. But the school board has not been able to put schools in all the new neighbourhoods that have sprung up in the sprawl that previous councils have approved.
"We want to build schools where the kids are, we want to build schools so that kids can walk to school, so kids can ride their bike to school, so kids don't have to be on a bus for an hour both ways," Trisha Estabrooks told Episode 174 of Speaking Municipally. "When the city is building these neighbourhoods that are way on the outskirts of the city, that does cause problems."
Meanwhile, schools in mature neighbourhoods are often underutilized because there are fewer families with school-aged children living there. "And it's because their houses aren't affordable," Estabrooks told Taproot's civic affairs podcast. "The type of infill that we're building has to change, right? We want to invest in our mature communities. I want to invest in our mature community schools."
The province has made decisions that make it harder both to serve fast-growing communities at the edge of the city and to attract families to mature neighbourhoods closer to the centre of the city. The Alberta government has not funded a new school in Edmonton Public for two years in a row, even though the school division is growing by about 3,000 students per year.
"That means that kids are on the bus longer. That means that our class sizes are getting bigger," Estabrooks said, adding that students in the catchment area of Lillian Osborne High School have to win a lottery to go to their neighbourhood school.
The province also refused to fund a replacement school for Delton School, even though it has been at or near the top of the school board's capital funding request for years. Delton was built in 1946, and it doesn't have proper wheelchair access, among other things. "Delton's a great little community school, but it needs a lot of work," said Estabrooks, whose Ward D includes Delton. "It deserved to be on that capital plan list. Unfortunately, the ministry felt that that request shouldn't be funded."
Education Minister Adriana LaGrange's department explained the decision by noting Delton's enrolment is only 69%. "If EPSB was truly concerned about building for growth, they needed to prioritize new schools in growing areas at the top of their amalgamated list," spokesperson Katherine Stavropoulos told Global News.
And that is indeed what the school board has done, Estabrooks said, noting that its capital wish list is now topped by a request for a new school in Glenridding Heights, a neighbourhood south of Ellerslie Road in UCP minister Kaycee Madu's riding of Edmonton South West.
