Alberta announces $8.6B plan to build new schools amid surging population growth

Premier Danielle Smith has launched an ambitious school construction plan to help relieve pressure created by a population boom by creating 50,000 spaces for students over the next three years. 

The School Construction Accelerator Program, announced by Smith in a provincewide televised address Tuesday evening, will cost $8.6 billion over three years. It adds $6.5 billion to the previously announced amount of $2.1 billion. 

Smith said the plan aims to create an additional 150,000 student spaces in the four years after the initial three-year push, for a total of 200,000 over seven years.

"This is quite literally the fastest and largest build our province can manage given available construction workforce capacity and the time it takes to permit, prepare and service available school sites," Smith said. 

Smith said cabinet just approved funding for schools in Calgary, Edmonton, Barrhead, Breton Mallaig, Redcliff, Taber and Wainwright. She did not offer details about how many schools will be built and whether they will be built under public-private partnerships. 

She also didn't say how Alberta plans to recruit additional teachers. The address was prerecorded and Smith was travelling back from a government trip to the United States on Tuesday. 

Many Alberta schools, particularly in Edmonton and Calgary, are at or are over-capacity. Smith said more than 200,000 people moved to the province in 2023.

Smith said the system is adding 33,000 students, or the equivalent of 35 new schools, each year.  

Smith said people are coming to the province because of jobs and low taxes. But she blamed the federal Liberal government for upsetting the delicate balance with its "unrestrained open border policies."

In a memo released last week, the advocacy committee of the Edmonton Public Schools board said the district is growing by about 5,000 students a year, enough to fill two new high schools. 

Watch| Alberta premier announces School Construction Accelerator Program:

The division will be out of high school capacity by 2027, the memo adds, yet the province granted construction funding for one K-9 school in the 2022-23 school year. Edmonton Public Schools is the second-largest division in Alberta.

The accelerator fund will also allow the province to buy specialized modular classrooms to house 20,000 new students while the new schools are built, Smith says. 

Smith's plan will also add another 12,500 spaces in charter schools over the next four years. There are currently about 12,000 Alberta students in charter schools and the plan would create space for double that number.