Yesterday, we welcomed our Minister of Education, Adriana LaGrange and our local MLA, Devin Dreeshen, along with members of our CESD board to PES to celebrate the announcement of the new Penhold Waskasoo Middle School. This announcement comes at an important time as our student population in Penhold continues to grow. It is expected that Penhold Waskasoo Middle School will open in September of 2025.
To see more photos visit our photo gallery.
On March 8th, our CESD Board of Trustees passed the motion to name our new school Penhold Waskasoo Middle School. An additional exciting piece to get us one step closer to our new school.
Earlier this year, our Board asked for public input from the community for help in naming the new school. Several names were submitted for the Board to consider and they thank all community members for providing ideas for this.
This name will come into effect July 1st, 2025. Our current name will remain in effect until then.
On Wednesday March 1st, the Government of Alberta announced that we have received funding for the building of a new Middle School in Penhold. We did receive design funding in last years budget so we had hoped that this announcement would be coming.
Staff and students at the school are extremely excited for this news. While we love our little school, we are definitely out of space.
With this announcement, we will be finalizing plans and moving to the next stages of this process with hopes to break ground late summer/early fall. It is expected that our new building will open September 2025.
It has been a busy fall working with Alberta Infrastructure and our Architectural firm in finalizing the designs for our new school. We are happy to say that we have finished our schematic design. Our design incorporates the elements our committee liked in our tours to create a beautiful and functional school design.
In late December, we were pleased to hear from the Alberta Government that they gave approval for our design to be planned with the intention that when we are approved for our new school build, we will be able to manage the building of this school through our own school division rather than through the Alberta Government. This is exciting to hear as this should allow for more streamlining and, hopefully, a quicker building process. We will be waiting anxiously for announcements to come later in the spring to see if we will be approved for funding to build our new school.
At our January Parent Council meeting we will be sharing the proposed designs with our parent population.
The provincial government released the names of the communities and school divisions who have been approved for new school buildings as well as design funding. We are happy to announce that Chinook’s Edge School Division has been approved for design funding for a replacement school for Penhold Elementary School.
This means that we will be working with Alberta Infrastructure and an architectural firm to start the process of designing what a replacement school for Penhold Elementary School will look like.
This news is very exciting. The current Penhold Elementary School building was built in 1954 and has undergone two additions to the school and many upgrades over the years. We have outgrown our current building and are excited for the possibility of a new school building in the future.
Please see this link for the official announcement from the Alberta Government.
In an effort to build the best middle school possible, CESD has put together a committee that includes school staff, parents, Town of Penhold staff, School Board Trustees and Division Office Staff. This committee will tour schools throughout Central Alberta to gather information that will build our thoughts and wishes for what the new school design will look like. Thank you to those staff members and parents who volunteered their time to be part of this group.
