'Tipping point': Edmonton high schools bursting at the seams

School boards expect Edmonton high school classrooms will reach their limits within the next four years, as schools adapt to a growing student population with building extensions, multi-use classroom spaces and online learning tools.

Four Edmonton high schools are already considered over-capacity and half of Edmonton high schools are at 94 per cent capacity or above, based on 2018 enrolment numbers.

Both the Edmonton Public school board and the Catholic School board predict that all high schools will be full by 2022.

"I've seen classes in gymnasiums, I've seen classes using the stage or learning commons or the library," said Michelle Draper, the Edmonton Public school board chair.

Over the last two years, seven new Catholic schools and 13 new public schools have opened, but none of those new buildings have been senior high schools. The top request on the Edmonton Public board capital budget is a new Meadows high school in southeast Edmonton.

In Mill Woods, J. Percy Page High School is at 108 per cent capacity and Holy Trinity, the Catholic high school on the same site, is at 119 per cent capacity.

Holy Trinity is currently undergoing modernization, but still won't have enough room for students when the project is complete.

"We predict that as soon as that modernization is complete that they'd be at capacity if not over," said John Fiacco, assistant superintendent of educational planning for Edmonton Catholic.

Edmonton Catholic has requested a high school at the Heritage Valley site as part of their capital budget plan. Fiacco said he hopes it will ease some of the space concerns in Mill Woods, but those plans are still waiting on approval from the province.

"These are all hopes and dreams without infrastructure money," he said.

Edmonton's biggest student high school feeling the crunch

Harry Ainlay High School, across the Whitemud from Southgate Centre, is the largest and oldest high school in Edmonton.

With around 2,600 students enrolled, it is at 96 per cent capacity and it added 200 students to its population in the last year alone.

Nour Abdelhakim, a Grade 11 student at Harry Ainlay, said there are challenges to having so many students in one building.

"There tends to be lineups to the washrooms, that's why you get off class and run to the closest bathroom as fast as you can," Abdelhakim said.

In between classes, the hallways at Harry Ainlay are full.

Principal, Gane Olson, said moving from class to class was even more difficult for students last year, after flooding forced staff to close the central hub in the centre of the building while repairs were underway.

"Corners of our rotunda would take minutes to get through," said Olson.

Since it reopened, students can cut across the middle to get to class more quickly, he said, but it can be tricky at times.

To ease some of the congestion, the school added a new hallway through the centre of the cafeteria area in 2016, leaving 300 seats at the cafeteria tables.

High schools adapting to size constraints

Harry Ainlay is one of many high schools in Edmonton that have modernized to allow more students to attend the school.

"Administrators are very creative and very proactive," said Fiacco.

Some schools, he said, have taken a computer lab and made it a multi-use during other periods and in some cases schools have had to use classroom space in adjoining junior high school buildings for senior high students.

Public school board chair Draper said along with the need for a new school comes a price tag of around $79 million.

Building a high school would be almost three times as costly as the average elementary school, but accommodates only around twice the number of students.

But Draper said that expansions can only do so much before new schools need to be built to deal with a growing population.

"There is a tipping point where it becomes more expensive to upgrade and modernize bring that building up to 21st-century learning and it would make more sense to build a new structure," she said.