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Catholic Board transfers ownership of École St. Thomas d’Aquin building

Mar 18, 2019 | 5:08 PM

 

MEDICINE HAT, AB – After closing its doors in June of 2018, the Catholic Board of Education has transferred ownership of the École St. Thomas d’Aquin building to the Prairie Rose School Division (PRSD) on a 10-year period for the sum of $1.

“The motion was made to do that at the March meeting,” explained Catholic Board Chair, Dick Mastel. “We’ve just signed the memorandum of understanding with the PRSD and the deal doesn’t become final until the Minister of Education has signed off on it, as per the Education Act.”

Mastel says that step is merely a technicality, as the Minister is generally quite happy when school-boards can cooperate with one another on the transfer of vacant facilities.

“When a school building becomes vacant, the Education Act lays out guidelines for how that facility can be used. Firstly, it’s open to any other school jurisdiction to use it. If no other school jurisdiction has a need for it, then it goes to other government departments. If none of those work, it can go up for sale.”

Mastel believes this is a great opportunity for both sides of the agreement.

“As far as we’re concerned, it reduces our expenses. We have ongoing expenses with cutting grass, insuring the building and utilities for the building and now, won’t have those. PRSD will now have an actual school for their program and I know the PRSD is happy to have the facility.”

Secretary Treasurer for the PRSD, Ryan Boser, echoed Mastel’s enthusiasm.

“Our current facility for the Mennonite program is the old RCMP building and well it worked over the last five years, it didn’t have sufficient space for a gymnasium and that’s one of the items that was appealing to us with this new facility,” explained Boser.

In addition to not having a gymnasium, Boser says there were other issues with their current facility as well.

“We didn’t have any playground equipment at the old school. We just had some fake turf in there and this facility in Medicine Hat has a full sized playground and soccer field. It provides a lot more options for our students.”

At their current facility, the Mennonite program also didn’t have enough capacity to house their approximately 90 students.

“We had our kindergarten and grade 1 programs in one of our other Redcliff schools. So, it’s nice to have everyone under one roof and it’s going to be a traditional school that has all the aspects of what we need to build a sufficient program for our students.”

Boser says the pending approval from the Minister of Education will determine when they can move into the new facility.

“We’d love to get the program in there this year, prior to next year, but a lot of that is going to depend on whether or not we get approval.”

Boser says the name for the Redcliff Mennonite Alternative School will likely change once the deal is made official.

“I think we’re going to involve our students and parents to try and come up with a new name. Our board has the responsibility of naming the schools however, we would like it to be a collaborative process.”

Boser says once they move into the new building, the former facility will stay under the ownership of the PRSD.

“We’re not interested in disposing or selling it at this time. We feel like we can use it for something else, we’re just not sure what that looks like yet. We’re hoping it can supplement the instruction in Redcliff. Hopefully, we can do something creative and innovative to move the division forward.”