Executive orientation through new H.A Kostash school

By Irene van der Kloet 

From Highway 28, the new H.A. Kostash school construction across from the Smoky Lake Complex was visible. The construction is now in its final stages. CAOs and councillors from Smoky Lake Town and County and representatives from Aspen View School Division took a tour through the almost-finished building on April 5th. In what will be the workout space, the visitors, in full safety gear, were greeted by site supervisor Jeremy Murray. After going through the necessary safety precautions, they started the tour. Whereas Jeremy explains the technical aspects of the building, Neil O’Shea, Aspen View School Division superintendent, is well-versed on the purpose of various rooms and is the tour guide this morning. “The school is for children from daycare to grade 12 and is designed for 480 students. That sets the standard for how many classrooms are built. We’ll see many multi-purpose rooms”, Neil explains. “The building is completely set up for modern-day teaching, with classrooms and break-out rooms throughout the building. These break-out rooms are spaces where children can learn, apart from the classrooms where teachers teach. This modern teaching style creates opportunities to separate areas using sliding doors, sometimes glass sliding doors. Every room has an interactive TV and whiteboards.” The tour starts with the daycare. The daycare has its own space in the building with its own entrance, playground, kitchen and bathrooms. A unique space is the “Great Beginnings” space. This is the Pre-K group (3-4-year-old kids), a space not funded by Alberta Education but by “Great Beginnings”. They borrow the space from the school. The tremendous amount of daylight from the many oversized windows stands out throughout the building. This gives the building a spacious and open character; where there are light fixtures, they are LED. The courtyard, wholly shielded from the outside world, is a learning space. The gym is the gem of the building; it is enormous, much bigger than in most schools. “I’ve built several schools, but never a school with a gym this size,”’ Jeremy says. The gym also has big windows, and there is a stage. “We do not have bleachers yet, but we will have them in the future,”’ Neil adds. Smoky Lake Town and Smoky Lake County put in extra funds to construct this bigger-than-usual gym. It looks like much thought was put into the building, not only for today’s use but also for future use. For example, the library has a separate entrance in case the school ever wants public access to the library. Then there are several labs for science, construction, and horticulture (the latter spills into the courtyard). “The clean lab is used for robotics, but it can be morphed into anything they want it to be,” Neil says. The audience is impressed with this building; it will be an asset for the town and county and, most of all, a lovely place for children to learn.