There’s no word yet on whether Dapp School will get the six modular classrooms and other modernization work that’s needed to turn it into the Pembina North Community School.
This could be good news or bad news, depending where you’re standing.
On the one hand, those in favour of maintaining the two schools in northern Westlock County may be granted a stay of execution. If students don’t have rooms at Dapp, they’ll likely have to stay in Jarvie and Fawcett. On the other hand, it’s bad news because the school board has yet to even discuss a contingency plan.
In just eight months, Dapp School is slated to take on the students who are now at Jarvie and W.R. Frose schools, but there’s still no official word from the province if the modular classrooms are even going to be forthcoming.
And even if the province does announce the modular classrooms will be coming, it’s a pretty tall order to get everything ready to go in just eight months — especially when students will be using the space for six of those months.
There have been months of delays in getting just one modular classroom for Eleanor Hall School in Clyde, ostensibly due in part to a greater need in southern Alberta. So where does this confidence come from that six classrooms can be procured, moved and installed on time as promised?
One shouldn’t be overly pessimistic about these things, but the fact discussions about what happens if Plan ‘A’ fails is troubling.
Board chair Kim Webster has said that at this point the board has been given enough information to believe the modernization will, in fact, take place — but that it’s not a certainty. And as for a backup plan, “Let’s see where we are at the end of February.”
Many have said right from the beginning that the timeline to have the schools closed and all the students moved for the start of the 2014/15 school year was pretty ambitious.
And certainly it is very possible that Alberta Education will come through, the modular classrooms will be installed and the modernization will be wrapped up by the end of the summer.
But discussions about a backup plan should have begun as soon as the southern Alberta floodwaters started to be mopped up.
