Enrolment at Blackie School is dropping, putting its long-term viability in question, but the school division has a potential solution close at hand.
Blackie School’s enrolment this fall is down to 90 students from 117 last year.
The Foothills School Division (FSD) should be commended for its commitment to keeping the school open, but if enrolment continues its fall how long will that commitment be financially viable?
Ironically, the school division had an excellent idea to help boost Blackie several years ago, but it dropped the puck so to speak.
FSD introduced its Hockey Canada program in Blackie several years ago, but rather than offer the program exclusively in Blackie, as was first intended, the program spread to schools in several communities. There was no incentive for students to go to Blackie to take the Hockey Canada initiative.
However, the FSD has a second opportunity.
The division has announced plans to introduce an elite hockey program called PEAK and it is to be offered at the new Heritage Heights arena.
However, students taking PEAK will not be able to attend Heritage Heights School as it is at capacity.
As a result, students will be bused back and forth to Okotoks Junior High School.
A better alternative would be to offer PEAK in Blackie. The arena, with newly renovated dressing rooms, is next door to the school which has plenty of room for additional students. In fact, PEAK could probably have its own wing in Blackie School. As a result, students would not have to be bused to a different community to take their classes saving time and resources.
Granted, the Blackie Arena is not new and neither is the school and each would need some work perhaps as they do not have the bells and whistles their counterparts in Heritage Heights. However, Heritage Heights School does not need help and Blackie does. Ensuring the viability of a school should be the school division’s priority, not which arena is better suited to its programs.
The school division would likely not be alone in trying to make something work in Blackie either.
Certainly the Blackie community would work with FSD to make improvements to the arena especially if it meant saving its school.
The PEAK project has potential as it offers unique programming to local students, but its impact would be that much greater if it could save a school as well.
