CALGARY -- Calgary Board of Education officials will meet with parents Thursday to discuss how to keep a local sports school from closing its doors.
The board’s lease for the National Sport School (NSS) at WinSport expires this June but funding concerns have created additional uncertainty.
The CBE allocated $1.8 million annually to the NSS and "the cost of maintaining this program as its exists is no longer affordable," according to a document posted on the school’s website.
Moving the program would save about $1 million a year, the board said. However, some belt-tightening has been required in the wake of a provincial government funding freeze on education.
Colin Aitchison, press secretary for the Ministry of Education. notes that the NSS is a great example of how educational choice enhances the quality of education in Alberta, but left it up to parents to take action.
"If parents are unhappy with the decision that CBE makes, there are other options, including applying to open a charter school to fill this need or pursuing a relationship with another school division," said Aitchison. "We of course understand that school divisions - like all Albertans - are forced to make some difficult financial decisions during tough economic times."
Currently, about 200 students from Grades 9-12 attend the program that gives access to WinSport’s hockey rinks, ski slope, halfpipe, terrain park and gymnastics club, as well as dry land training facilities at the Canadian Sport Institute.
The majority of NSS students are winter athletes with dreams of going to the Olympics.
Former alumni include Olympic champions Kyle Shewfelt (gymnastics), Jennifer Botterill, Carla MacLeod and Jocelyne Larocque (hockey), Kaillie Humphries (bobsled), Brady Leman (ski cross) and six-time Paralympic swim champion Jessica Sloan.
Former NSS student Hailey Casper competed on the world stage for Team Canada as a diver. Without the school, she says that never would have been her reality.
"When I started at NSS, I was able to train and I made the junior and senior national teams and with the support of teachers and fellow student athletes was able to accomplish my dreams instead of having to make the choice between school and sport," said Casper.
"I was upset to hear a couple of student athletes have already made the transition and one of them was denied accommodation for absences required for competition travel and was forced to pull out of their spot for the Pan Am Games — heading into the 2020 Olympic year, that’s just absolutely devastating."
Thursday’s meeting will give parents a better insight into the situation. A decision on the school’s future will come in May.
The CBE is proposing two alternatives. One is blending all students and some staff into another high school. Prior to relocating to Canada Olympic Park, the NSS operated out of its own dedicated wing in a public high school.
The school board is not interested again in a school-within-a-school model, "because it would not generate the required cost savings".
The other option would be to abandon the sport-school concept altogether, forcing athletes to return to high schools where they live and individually negotiate compromises with traditional classroom teachers to pursue sport.
Under CBE policy, missing classing for non-school athletics are considered unexcused absences.
Currently the CBE pays a lease of $108,000 annually to WinSport, which has offered to extend the lease for a year for $1.
According to the board, this offer would still leave over $900,000 in costs that could be avoided if student athletes were supported in a different fashion out of an existing CBE high school.
With files from The Canadian Press
