The Blackie School will receive Provincial grant money for modernization.

A lot of the credit is thanks to hard work from the parents and teachers at Blackie School.

Livingstone-Macleod MLA Roger Reid says he's excited to see a rural community receive the funding as he pushed hard for his riding.

"One of my commitments in running for office and one of the things I've worked hard on since we've gone to Edmonton is advocating for rural Alberta, our rural students don't have the choice of their peers in the city so we need to make sure they have every advantage they can to get great educations they can and be in safe and healthy spaces."

Blackie school will be getting funding to go towards some much-needed upgrades. 

Reid says he's happy the school received the funding.

"One of my priorities was some school modernizations in Livingstone-Macleod, I'm really pleased that my first announcement of this is the modernization of the Blackie School."

The funding will go towards the school itself but also the community.

During the presentation, Foothills School Division Chairman Larry Albrecht announced that schools act as community hubs especially in smaller rural towns so the funding will go towards repurposing parts of the schools to be used in the community as well, the gymnasium will be duel-purposed as a community hall equipped with a full-sized kitchen and the current library will be upgraded and made available to the community.

Blackie School Vice Principal Tammi Andrew says this is really important to the students and teachers and she's happy with all the work that's been done by the parents.

"We are really excited because we have a really dedicated group of kids and parents. This is really important to them. It's their home away from home, so I think we are excited to have some modernization to a building that has been really well-loved over the course of the years."

Blackie School Principal Chase Ellis says they're excited to dig deeper into what they need to upgrade now that they have the ability to.

"As we move forward through the process we look forward to engaging our families and the rest of our school community and really coming to some specifics around what it is that we need to further not only our learning in our classrooms but in the spaces outside of our classrooms."

Andrew says the community is a big part of their school and they are excited to make those connections for the kids.

"The community partnership is so important to us because we don't operate like schools just within the four walls we have here, reaching out to the community and having that partnership and engagement and showing the kids that they are global citizens and they need to contribute and give back to the community, that's a big piece to us so it will be nice to have that connection where they are right in the building."

Ellis says the process began before they were at the school.

"The process started well before our time, there was some community engagement, some work done just within the foothills school division and the facilities department identifying some of the needs within our building infrastructure wise."

Ellis says they're excited to see what happens in the future.

 

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