Photo: Grande Prairie and District Catholic School Board

By Emily Keller

catholic schools

Students in St. Patrick School boundary to be moved to Mother Teresa next school year

Apr 1, 2020 | 2:32 PM

Students in the boundary for the St. Patrick School will be moved to Mother Teresa School for the 2020/2021 school year.

There are around 230 students in the St. Patrick School boundary right now. Ninety of those students have been sent to St. Gerard School, while another 90 have been attending Holy Cross, which is located in the Crystal Heights neighbourhood.

Karl Germann, Superintendent of schools for the Grande Prairie and District Catholic Schools, says the change will benefit students and the school board by bringing those students back closer to their catchment area

“Since those kids are in the boundary to attend St. Joes anyway as they grow older, we are directing them to Mother Teresa School for shorter ride times, for a little but of financial efficiency because that’s certainly going to be needed once all of this is done, and it’s an area where the students and school are close to one another.”

He says bussing the students to Holy Cross has cost the Grande Prairie and District Catholic School Board around a quarter of a million dollars. Germann says the busses will also bus students who need it to the area of the Cool Aid Society and the YMCA for after school care.

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“We’re going to bus those kids after they come home from Mother Teresa, and the kids can stay there for after school care until their parents or parent pick them up after work is done, and so that’s going to help out some of those families as well, because they really didn’t have care after school when they were up in the Holy Cross area, not everyone utilizes YMCA or can afford it, some utilize the Cool Aid Society.”

St. Patrick School has been closed since 2017, when it was decided the school needed significant remediation. In February, the GPCSD announced that instead of modernizing the school, it will be torn down and replaced with funding from the province.

The budget for the rebuild is $17-million. The school board says that the build itself may take up to 15 months, but there is no exact date for when the new build will open.