St. Patrick School could be open to students by 2021. It was previously said that the school could be finished in time for the 2020 school year but Grande Prairie & District Catholic Schools superintendent Karl Germann says he’s now hoping to be in the building by 2021.
“We’re in the design stage of that school. We’ve finished 30 percent and by the end of October we’ll be at 60 percent… we’re hoping to tender late in the winter and be in that school by 2021.”
The school has been closed since 2017 when mould was found in the building. Before the closure, the government had approved funding to modernize the school. Germann said previously that $10 million of the project and $400,000 for mould removal would be covered by the government. He is now saying they’ve had to cut things like parking lots and bus turnarounds in order to stay on schedule and on budget.
“The province only gave us so much money to modernize the school and it probably requires a little bit more money. We’re trying to reduce as much as we can but you also have to make sure that when you build it, it’s built to a standard so that it last another 30 or 50 years.”
St. Patrick is not the only school Germann is working on right now. Students were originally moved into St. John Paul II School last April in order to get students and teachers used to the new environment. They celebrate their grand opening and first full school year in the building on September 21.