Alberta Education has approved the installation of a new $300,000 modular classroom at Eleanor Hall School to deal with the school’s burgeoning enrolment, and the Pembina Hills school division will pay a quarter of the bill.
“He was pleased to inform us that he will be approving one new modular classroom for Eleanor Hall School,” said Supt. Colleen Symyrozum-Watt on the letter the division received from Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson.
“Our local MLA, Maureen Kubinec, is aware of this and is very supportive of this allocation.”
The letter also asked Pembina Hills to contribute a portion of the roughly $300,000 price tag — specifically the cost of transportation and set-up of the unit.
“The province would continue to pay for the modular classroom, and boards are being asked to pay for half of the cost of transportation, set-up and links,” said Symyrozum-Watt.
Johnson said they received 300 requests for modulars in the 2012-2013 school year. By asking divisions to cover a portion of the cost, they have doubled the number of modulars going to schools over the previous year.
For more on the province’s new approach to modular classrooms, see Page 7 of this week’s edition of the Town & Country.
Trustees passed a motion at their regular meeting last Wednesday in Barrhead to withdraw $75,000 out of the division’s operations and maintenance reserve fund to help pay for a portion of the transportation and set-up costs.
Symyrozum-Watt stressed this is not part of the division’s capital plan that is submitted to Alberta Education.
“I want to make that very clear — this is separate from the board’s capital plan,” she said.
No date was given for when the modular classroom will be built and then installed.
While most rural schools are struggling with enrolment, Eleanor Hall School principal Don Hinks said the school has been growing “quite a bit” for the past five to seven years.
“The numbers we have coming up are crazy,” he said. “We are bursting at the seams for numbers.”
The division recognized this growth and submitted an application last fall for a modular classroom to be established at Eleanor Hall, in addition to Busby School.
Getting this new modular classroom will enable the school to maintain class sizes where they want them to be, Hinks indicated.
He noted that when you have 35 kids in one classroom and one teacher tending to all of them, “learning will look very different” than in a classroom a fraction of that size.
Hinks said the new modular unit will be used as either a Grade 1 or Grade 2 stand-alone classroom.
The new modular classroom will be housed just off of the school’s library, he indicated.
Eleanor Hall School, which opened in January 2008 at a cost of $8.7 million, was built to accommodate modular classrooms and they’re already using six of them.
As such, this is the last physical modular classroom that can be attached to the building, said Hinks, noting that any other modulars will have to be placed separately from the school.
“I’m not sure what we’re going to do as we keep growing,” said Hinks.
