WATCH ABOVE: One Edmonton Catholic school is so full that an entire grade will have to elsewhere to make enough space for next year. Kendra Slugoski reports.
EDMONTON – A Catholic elementary school in south Edmonton is dealing with significant overcrowding that will result in students having to move to a different school.
Monsignor William Irwin Elementary School is over capacity, with every available space being used as a classroom, including the library. Nineteen portables have already been added to the school but there isn’t room for more.
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A new school in Windermere is supposed to relieve some of the pressure but it isn’t scheduled to open until the fall of 2016, so parents are left with two options: move kindergarten or Grade 6 students to another school.
“The choice will be up to parents,” said Lori Nagy, spokesperson for Edmonton Catholic Schools.
“We have 184 kindergarten students expected in the fall and we have quite a lot of Grade 6 students, over 90 Grade 6 students.”
“We are suggesting to parents that either the kindergarten students or the Grade 6 students go to Archbishop Joseph MacNeil which is about a five, maybe ten, minute bus ride,” added Nagy.
Parents say poor planning is the root cause of the issue.
“They didn’t realize just how quickly this area would expand and because of it, we’re seeing these challenges today,” said one parent, Trevor Gartner.
“We’re quite upset because we actually moved to this area just so we could come to this school,” added another, Sajida Pellegrini.
“We made a huge investment into this community and now it feels like we’re being let down a little bit.”
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The Catholic School Board said it built schools according to the City of Edmonton census figures.
“Those are always very good at predicting what we think we will have. And sometimes it predicts correctly and sometimes it predicts a little lower than you think,” explained Nagy.
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The shift will only be for one year, the school board said, but parents aren’t convinced.
“The first day we opened the kids were almost a full school. The second year it was over-supplied and over-demand,” said Gartner.
“We haven’t seen any improvement at all so I don’t think this will be a short-term problem.”
The school board is scheduled to meet with parents on Jan. 29 to gather feedback. A decision is expected shortly after that.