Northern Lights Public Schools has released its three and ten year Capital Plans and they hope to get down to business in Lac La Biche County. The plans are what school division would like to see get funding from the provincial government. the 2018 plans feature projects including a new elementary school built to replace Vera M. Walsh in Lac La Biche and some modernization at Ecole Plamondon.
Nicole Garner is with NLPS, she says while the list of projects in the plan are what the board wants, the ball is in the province’s court to fund them.
“We basically refer to it as our “wish list” because, while it’s called a three or ten year capital plan, it’s really up to the provincial government to decide when money is released to build schools. Usually it’s not withing the three or ten year timeline in the plan.”
Garner says the two projects in Lac La Biche County will take quite a bit of work, but will help students in the long run.
“The replacement school for Vera is to replace it with a brand new elementary school. The project for Plamondon is a lot of mechanical, electrical upgrades. Also, that school needs some CTS (Career and Technology) space. It is a K-12 school, there’s high school courses offered there and there is definitively a lack of CTS classrooms to offer different courses.”
The plan also calls for a new school to be built in the Buffalo Lake Metis settlement by 2022 and work to bring both the North Star Elementary School and Iron River School up to date.
The government will review the requests along with others around the province to decide who will get funding. No timeline has been set for an answer to the requests. A complete 2018 Capital Plan can be found by clicking here.