The Modular Crunch: a bureaucratic nightmare

As you’ve probably heard, East Lake School in Chestermere is badly in need of portables and is facing serious capacity issues. The school opened this year with an enrolment of 112 percent, grade seven and eight students combined in rooms originally meant for optional classes, and the grades 3, 4 and 5/6 French Immersion classes sharing the library. School officials estimate they will need 16 modular buildings for the start of the 2015 school year. On October 3, Rocky View Schools sent a request to the province for another $25 million to help create more classroom space for students.
As the Education critic for the Official Opposition, I hear from many concerned parents, teachers and administrators about overcrowding in Alberta classrooms. This situation is hitting very close to home for me, since this is my daughter’s school, and my family’s home community.
To make matters worse, a recent media report is shedding some light on just how bungled the situation with portables is in Alberta. According to a supplier of the modular classrooms, roughly 40-50 structures have been manufactured and are ready for transportation and installation, yet delays in delivering them persist and answers are difficult to find. In other words, kids in East Lake and many other schools are crammed into classes like sardines while the portables needed to fix the problem sit empty in a field. This is quickly turning into a bureaucratic nightmare, and sadly is all too familiar with a government that in four decades has morphed into a bureaucratic employment machine incapable of getting itself out of the way so it can do what Albertans’ need done. It really shouldn’t be this hard.
While I understand that there are other parties involved in the installation of modular classrooms, I would expect the province to be taking a leadership role to meet this exceptional space challenge. I have delivered a letter to the Minister of Education Gordon Dirks, Premier Jim Prentice and Infrastructure Minister Manmeet Bhullar on this issue, asking for more clear information and action to address situations all over the province just like ours here in Chestermere. The families facing these space problems don’t need provincial ministries to blame each other and pass the buck to school boards or suppliers, they need action.
The problem is, neither the Premier nor the Minister of Education is focused on the business of government at the moment. Minister of Education Gordon Dirks is out door knocking in Calgary-Elbow, and Premier Prentice is travelling the province looking more like Santa Claus, handing out gifts that have already been given out. So while Alberta students pay the price for this government’s inability to plan for the future and keep election promises, the people who should be working on a solution are busy planning photo ops and putting up signs. This situation is unacceptable.
Our provincial government has to be able to react to crises like these, and the success of our education system depends on the ability of the province to provide our kids with adequate learning environments.
Under the Wildrose Moving Alberta Forward: Excellence in Education policy, the Wildrose would invest $2 billion in funding for new schools, modulars and modernizations to help meet the needs of our growing communities. This investment is absolutely necessary, but just as important as this investment is the need for a government that will bring stability, transparency and accountability to the delivery of education.
My prediction is the PC’s will start to build a lot of schools in the next year, just in time for an election. It’s an all too familiar pattern. They shouldn’t have to wait until election time to do what’s right for our kids.