Mayor Jeff Genung is hopeful the province's school construction accelerator program means we'll be getting more schools sooner.
"I've long said Cochrane has been the recipient of a lot of new residents and it's putting extreme pressures on all of our schools and frankly on all of our infrastructure," says Genung. "It was great to see the UCP government step forward and announce a plan to get more schools built in the province."
Among the eight new school sites identified by the Cochrane, there's one in Heartland that is shovel ready.
The school division says a new high school site that's part of the Horse Creek Rd. project is expected to shovel ready in 2026.
Mayor Genung says another site in Heritage Hills will follow, another is in Sunset Ridge and three sites have been identified in the new South Bow Community.
To be clear, none of these projects have been approved for funding by Alberta Education at this point. Being shovel-ready, though, is a must before that funding will be given consideration.
In making the announcement last night, Premier Danielle Smith called on school authorities and municipalities to ensure sites are permitted and ready for construction.
Mayor Genung says he took measures in December 2022 to have town administration outline what school sites we have in queue, and it's been updated a few times since. He says the town has given a priority to having school sites shovel-ready and serviced as soon as possible.
That wasn't always the case when past council's approved developments.
"So, for us now to go and say, well, we want that school site sooner is really difficult to do, but what we can do when newer lands come on is ask for the development of the school sites to come and in the first phase of a development."
That, though, hasn't proven to be a bottleneck to getting new schools built, he points out.
"Ultimately, the backlog has been funding and yesterday's announcement is a step in the right direction."
Mayor Genung says new schools is among the top advocacy priorities of the town and they will support Rocky View Schools (RVS) in any way possible. Genung says schools are typically part of the discussion when meeting with provincial officials about Cochrane's needs.
"On Friday, I have a meeting with Infrastructure Minister (Peter) Guthrie, and this will be on the agenda to hopefully with this announcement we get another school or two announced and in the queue in Cochrane."
Two new Cochrane schools were among the top 10 capital priorities for RVS established in the spring.
READ MORE: Two Cochrane schools on new priority list
A new K to 8 in Heartland is fifth on the list and a new high school by the future Horse Creek Sports Park is sixth. At that time, funding for both were sought to be included in the province's 2026 budget.