PAGE 18 • INNOVATION — GROWTH — DIVERSITY 2010 S
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Holy Trinity School
Division is expanding By Gail Jansen
When the Holy Trinity School Division came to the realization a new school would be required to hold its growing population and replace two aging facilities, officials looked to partnerships as the cornerstone of their planning. With funding now in place to begin construction on the new Kindergarten to Grade 8 facility, and the design and construction process soon heading out to tender, Holy Trinity’s first partnership in this project came from wanting to make life a little easier for the parents of their students. Working in conjunction with Natural Wonders Early Learning Centre, a new day care centre offering 50 spaces will be something that’s available in the new school facility. It will provide infant and toddler care, right up to school-age children, although whether there will be after school care is still to be determined. “Right now, parents often have to drop their infants off at one location, and their toddlers off at another, before bringing their kids to school,” says Celeste York, the director of education for Holy Trinity. “Depending on the ages of their students, they could have two or three different sites that their children are attending. This will make it a little easier, and save parents some time.”
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With an eye to locating the new school on the north side of the City of Swift Current where development has just started, Holy Trinity is also looking at developing partnerships with both the Chinook School Division and the City. They want to see if they
might be able to pool some of their resources and create a building which will help them all achieve their goals. “We’ve been working on this for about a year already, just meeting informally with our partners so that we all kind of know what our needs are and how we can work together, what kind of synergies can be created and what kind of services can be shared,” says York. “Right now, we know we have the funding to go ahead, and so as we move forward with our planning we’ll need to be flexible so we can allow for the possibility of future partners, but in the meantime, we also know that we have to get going on our facility piece.” Looking to a phased construction process will allow each of the proposed partners to come in at varying stages as funding allows. York says care will be made to ensure the building is designed to include the possibility of phasing in the additional construction of possible future partners. For Holy Trinity division officials, the biggest partnership is the one with the students and the community as a whole.
Officials want to make sure students are part of the planning process, and learning as it unfolds, so plans are underway to integrate the project’s timeline into the curriculum.
“If we’re looking at architecture or interior design, or engineering or a plumbing contractor or mechanical systems, we know that there is some science there, there is some math there, there is communication skills, there is arts, there is literature.
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