School Concerns

School Already Overcapacity

The Rosemary Heights community has already reached the level that the existing population exceeds the school capacity facilities. Rosemary Heights Elementary has seven portable classrooms and is currently oversubscribed with 540 students with a capacity of 478. The school is densely packed with these portables and the available land area is small with a single playing field. The story is similar at Morgan Creek, with 470 students and a capacity of 406.

A new addition was added to the school and completed last year. Previously it was indicated that some of the portables were going to be moved away to another school to be used elsewhere once our school addition was done. The addition is complete and there is NO plan to move any of the current portables away from the school. The School District has indicated that portables are never moved away from a school when it is anticipated that those portables will be needed in the immediate or near future. Our community is not slowing down with the smaller developments that are already in progress. With new young families moving into these new homes the school population will not be decreasing.

The School District has indicated that our school is currently appropriate and proper for our CURRENT neighbourhood and the CURRENTLY anticipated densification. The Distrcit has indicated it might be possible to add two more portables to our school but that because the school grounds are already densely packed it is highly unlikely that any more portables would be added above the current ones unless we found ourselves in an exceptional or crisis circumstance.

The massive development proposed on the Rosemary Heights Retreat centre forest would create such a crisis. There is no plan for a new elementary school nearby to handle the approximately 300 homes with new families. Many in the community are outraged that developers push large developments through while the infrastructure and public facilities to support them are not present.

The intentional creation of the crisis is not acceptable to the people living in the Rosemary Heights community as it negatively impacts their children who are attending this school. The degradation of our children’s education is not acceptable.

Safety of Elementary Students

Another major concern of the proposed change in land use of the Rosemary Heights Retreat Centre is the danger to children due to additional roads and traffic. The new roads would create traffic that would be within one block of the elementary school. Many children walk along these streets already from the existing homes and townhomes. Speed bumps have been added to portions of this road due to the safety concerns already. Yet the development’s main traffic throughway would be right on this roadway as people make their way to and from 152nd street. The speed bumps do slow down individuals somewhat as they bump over them and race to the next one. There is also major concern that the cul-de-sac on 36 Ave immediately beside the school would be opened up to accommodate “better traffic flow” through the neighbourhood. The community is opposed to more traffic through the neighbourhood and especially around the elementary school. The ring roadways have been designed to have less traffic flow through the neighbourhood – especially with the school and larger number of children playing and living in the neighbourhood.