North Calgary residents hold rally to demand new high school

People living in north Calgary communities held a rally Sunday afternoon, demanding a public high school be built because there aren’t enough in the area to accommodate their population and demographics.

The rally was held on the vacant high school site located across from Nose Creek Middle School, between 12027 and 12069 Coventry Hills Way N.E.

Rally organizers said the communities of Coventry Hills, Country Hills, Harvest Hills and Panorama Hills have the same population as Airdrie, which has three public high schools.

Those central northern communities don’t have a public high school and most students have to take the bus to inner-city Calgary schools.

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Construction has also begun in the communities of Carrington and Livingston, which will add an additional 60,000 residents to the area.

According to organizers, a north central high school was on the books for as early as 2004, and they said it is desperately needed for their growing population.

David Hartwick, from the Northern Hills Community Association, said the commute can even make kids who take the bus late for school.

“It’s a long ways away and in wintertime, sometimes the buses don’t even show up at school until 11 or 11:30 a.m. because they got stuck in Coventry Hills or somwhere in between,” Hartwick said.

Former high school student Kyla Hearn knows about the issue firsthand after making the commute to go to high school in Crescent Heights.

“For someone that doesn’t have a vehicle, that gets very hard because you have to take two additional buses and then walk the last little bit to get to school, which can be pretty frustrating,” Hearn said.

The need for a high school was also brought forward in the Creating Space Project by the Eaton International Consulting Group in 2013.

Earlier this month, the Alberta government announced plans to build a second elementary school in the area.