With help from a provincial cash boost, a school near you may be opening sooner than you thought.
Alberta’s government has accelerated 16 Calgary school projects and 41 across the province, as part of its Schools Now program.
The acceleration is expected to cut around nine months of construction time off each project, according to the province.
Speaking on behalf of the Calgary Board of Education (CBE), who are receiving 12 of the city’s 16 accelerations, CBE Board of Trustees Chair Laura Hack, said that the announcement ensures progress is made towards needed classroom space.
“We’re grateful for this commitment to addressing our urgent and ongoing need for more space for students,” she said.
“One of these projects is the modernization of Annie Gale School, an important investment into aging infrastructure that will create new and updated learning spaces for students for years to come.”
When a school project is accelerated, it is given expedited funding and bumped to the next stage of development, according to Minister of Education and Childcare Demetrios Nicolaides.
Five of Calgary’s 12 accelerated projects are now in the design stage. The remainder are moving into construction.
Both Hack and Calgary Catholic School District (CCSD) Board Chair Lory Iovinelli said that these accelerations will help take a step towards needed change.
“As Calgarians, we’re fortunate to be celebrating Stampede Week, the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth. While there may not be any Midway rides or chuckwagons at today’s event, there is certainly plenty to celebrate,” Iovinelli said.
“The Schools Now program is definitely an occasion worth tipping our hats to.”
Currently, the CCSD has five projects in the design phase, three partially funded projects, and six fully funded school projects underway, including three new high schools, according to Iovinelli.
Accelerating projects could cut final cost: Province
From a government perspective, accelerated projects are chosen based on specific criteria within a three-stage process, Nicolaides said.
“The first stage is the planning phase, where the school division will begin to conceptually plan what that new school would look like and ensure that site readiness is completed. After that, the school can move towards the design phase, where we’ll look at the architectural schematics and drawings,” he said.
“Once all of that work is complete, we can move to full construction. You need to ensure that all of the conditions of that one stage are met and then the project, as we’re announcing today, can be ready at any point to move to the next phase.”
According to information provided to LWC from the CBE, some projects, like the Belmont/West Macleod High School for example, were unable to be accelerated.
“(The Belmont/West Macleod High School) is currently identified as a new school construction project request in CBE’s 2027–2030 Three-Year School Capital Plan. The plan was submitted earlier this year, but the project has not yet received provincial approval. The earliest opportunity for approval would be through the next provincial budget cycle, expected in late winter 2027,” a CBE-issued statement reads.
“Today’s Schools Now announcement applies to projects that have already received at least one stage of funding approval, allowing them to accelerate to the next phase (for example, from planning to design, or from design to construction). Because Belmont/West Macleod High School has not yet been approved, it was not eligible for acceleration through today’s announcement.”
Though neither Nicolaides nor Minister of Infrastructure Martin Long could say for sure, accelerating should, in principle, reduce school construction costs.
“My assumption would be that obviously, if we’re able to move faster, then we can deliver that project on a more cost-efficient basis,” Nicolaides said.
“Typically, costs can escalate when you drag a project out over a longer period of time. As we see every day, global dynamics can shift prices, energy prices, and other macroeconomic conditions.”
Long agreed with Nicolaides, stating that inflation impacts construction prices in the same way it impacts everything else, so the quicker a project gets done, the cheaper it is.
No matter when a new school may finally open its doors, Nicolaides is confident it will have enough teachers to fill its classrooms.
“We, on average, graduate more than 2,000 students from the B.Ed programs that we have from our various universities and colleges across the province,” the Minister said.
“All indicators suggest that we’ll be able to continue to recruit in an expedited manner to fill these schools.”
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