CANMORE – As students head back to school this year, they may find there are more students than usual.
At Canmore Collegiate High School (CCHS), there has been an increase of 90 students compared to the previous year, bringing the school size to about 670 students – believed to be the largest increase in students since the school opened.
“We see them coming from other local school systems. There are over 30 from other school systems,” said Chris MacPhee, superintendent of Canadian Rockies Public Schools (CRPS). “There are also over 30 from outside the Bow Valley, and we have another 20 Indigenous students that are coming.”
The increase in students presents a few challenges for the school district. The first is hiring teachers, which is not made any easier due to the housing crisis in the Bow Valley.
“There is not a lot we can do besides utilizing our technology system to put e-mails out to people to ask if they have any places to rent,” MacPhee said. “Some people in this office have people staying with them. We have educational assistants staying with our deputy superintendent.”
The district is currently looking ahead to its Lawrence Grassi Middle School Area Redevelopment Plan, which will include a provision of 20 residential units that would be part of the Canmore Community Housing program. There would also be 20 units of purpose-built employee housing units for staff of the Canadian Rockies Public Schools.
“It is our hope with the housing project at Lawrence Grassi that the first piece we would look at building is the staff housing,” MacPhee said. “We have had over 15 teachers alone, not to mention others, who have turned down jobs because they couldn’t find a place to live.”
The other issue is physical space in the school, but administrators say classroom ratios remain acceptable due to the increase in staff.
Currently, there are no plans to set up temporary classrooms to accommodate classroom sizes, but that could be on the table if student numbers continue to increase in the district.
“The class sizes we have in this Bow Valley, they do not even compare to what is going on in other places like Cochrane, Calgary and Edmonton,” MacPhee said.
