Melfort’s Maude Burke Elementary is so crunched for instructional space that it’s using the library as a classroom. Other classes can only use the library if that class is in the gym.
That’s why the North East School Division voted at its Nov. 28 board meeting to ask the education ministry if it can tap into its reserves and spend $800,000 to buy two new portables if the ministry decides it’s not going to fund its previous request for two portables each for four elementary schools across the division.
“We’re just not sure we’ll get ministry funding, so we’re looking at the possibility if we can explore whether we can self-fund that project,” said Don Rempel, the division’s director of education. “We’re hopeful that there will be some dollars provincially, but if not, we’re just looking at the board positioning themselves to self-fund our most crowded schools.”
If the school division would be able to secure two portables, one of them would be used to bring the Pre-Kindergarten program back to the school. That program has been centralized at Reynolds Central to save space at Maude Burke and Brunswick Elementary. The other portable would be used to get the class out of the library.
The division has also reduced the size of Maude Burke’s attendance boundaries in a bid to reduce the number of students going to the school.
The school has been making do with the situation in the library.
“They’ve been finding ways to schedule access throughout the day and use portable devices, laptops, etc. and accessing resources as the class needs them, but it’s not ideal,” Rempel said.
Maude Burke is Melfort’s newest school, built in 2001. It has had no major renovations or additions to date.
“If we can add some space to it, it will serve the city well for the next 50 years, whereas Reynolds and Brunswick will probably be replaced in the next 10 years,” Rempel said.
Luke Perkins, the division’s chair, looked at the bright side of the situation.
“You’ve got student population increasing in a province that not too many years ago was decreasing, but they are still problems that have to be dealt with.”
