One more amendment will be made to a Northern Lights Public School as Art Smith Aviation Academy will soon become a K-9 school.
This change will extend the current configuration by one grade. Board Chair Karen Packard explained why the change is coming now.
“In our initial Cold Lake configuration discussions, we did not plan any changes for Art Smith because our enrolment projections predicted it would be over capacity and couldn’t accommodate additional students,” explained Board Chair Karen Packard. “However, the COVID pandemic negatively impacted enrolment across the province and enrolments at Art Smith did not increase the way we thought they would.”
This provided the Board with an opportunity to revisit options for configuration changes to Art Smith. A survey was conducted in April with families of students in grades 5-8 showing support for the change sighting a reduced number of school transitions before high school.
2023-2024 is the final year of NLPS’s three-year plan to change the configuration of schools in Cold Lake to better fit capacity issues.
Among Art Smith Aviation Academy Nelson Heights School changed from 5-8 to 4-6, Cold Lake High School lost grade 9 and now only has students from grade 10-12. Cold Lake Junior High now hosts students from grades 7-9 instead of 4-8 and finally, North Star Elementary School gained three levels now teaching K-6 instead of K-3.