By Lisa Parent

Medicine Hat school boards anticipate renovation approvals following 2024 Alberta budget

Mar 1, 2024 | 4:02 PM

Alberta’s Spring provincial budget was unveiled Thursday in the legislature in Edmonton.

The province has set aside 1.9 billion dollars in total funding for building and modernizing 98 schools across Alberta.

An injection of 1.5 billion dollars is set aside to support special education and vulnerable students to help with growing classroom sizes.

The full funding profile for schools in Medicine Hat is expected to be released in a couple weeks, meaning it is currently unknown how much funding will be poured into our community.

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However, Superintendent of the Medicine Hat Catholic School Board, Dwayne Zarichny said as they’ve grown by over 400 students in the past four years and seeing an increase in the budget is good news.

“We did see an increase in the budget and from a first glance perspective, it looks like a fairly significant increase,” Zarichny told CHAT News on Friday morning.

“Until the funding manual comes out, it’s really difficult for us to say whether or not the increases were in the areas that we would like to have seen. But we do see increases in enrollment growth, there’s PUF funding has increased, Capital Maintenance Renewal Budget has been increased by a significant amount. So overall with a first blush look at it we’re pleased with what we saw.”

Zarichny is also looking forward to formally hearing if their new school and theatre project has been approved.

Chief Financial Officer Ryan Boser from Prairie Rose Public Schools provided CHAT with a statement regarding the new budget.

They are in a similar situation as the Catholic School Board, as they wait for their Parkside Jr High School modernization project to be approved in the new budget.

Superintendent of the Medicine Hat Public School Division, Mark Davidson said they are waiting for more details regarding the budget to comment.