Due to delays in the census on the Catholic population in Lac La Biche, administrators at the Lakeland Catholic School District say it is unlikely that a separate school will be able to open in the area by this September.
Due to delays in the census on the Catholic population in Lac La Biche, administrators at the Lakeland Catholic School District say it is unlikely that a separate school will be able to open in the area by this September.
As of July 8, door-to-door census takers had not yet started the next round of collecting the census.
Lakeland Catholic Secretary-Treasurer Sylvia Slowski said that even if all the steps in its proposal for expansion into Lac La Biche were successful, the amount of time it would take to complete the rest of the process would mean they would be unable to open the doors of a Catholic school for September 1.
“It’ s definitely a process, and it depends on how much time each step goes along the way,” Slowski said. “Based on those individual timelines... I would say we’ re not ready for September.”
The census, which was originally planned to wrap up at the end of May, will determine whether or not Catholics are a minority compared to Protestants in an area that surrounds the eastern half of Lac La Biche Lake.
According to Slowski, the mail-out stage of the census had a lower-than-expected return rate.
“We didn’ t get as large a turnout with the mail-out (census) as we had hoped, and so we’ re going to have to proceed on a door-to-door census,” she said. “We’ re not going to get 100% of people... but we are trying.”
Slowski couldn’ t disclose their minimum response rate, but they would try and push for as many answers as possible.
“It’ s definitely a time-consuming process, but until we determine through the census whether catholics are a minority or a majority, we really can’ t proceed any further,” she said. “If it turns out Catholics are a majority, for instance, there’ s nothing else we can do, it just ends there.”
According to Alberta Education, there is no deadline for making an application for a school, but government officials encourages applicants to submit by June 30 each year, and Slowski said they still have a number of steps to complete before they can apply.
If the census result was in Lakeland Catholic’ s favour, Slowski said they would need two to three weeks to advertise a public meeting to vote on starting a school district. The meeting would require 25 per cent of Catholics in the area, who would have to vote at least 50 per cent in favour.
“When the vote happens, you have to send the information to the government, (and) that could take two-to-three months before they respond back, approving the formation,” she said.
Alberta Education documents say that every household in the area should be canvassed, but if a census-taker leaves a form at a residence, and no response is received in 10 days, and the census-taker makes a second attempt to contact the resident, that constitutes a reasonable effort to complete the census.
“We’ re hoping for it to be complete as soon as possible, but it’ s a time-consuming process,” she said. “In the summer too it might be hard to get a hold of people if they’ re on vacation or away."
Two other road blocks are that the district doesn’ t yet have teachers or a physical space to put a school, and if they didn’ t have students by September 30, they would also not be eligible for government funding.
“All that has to be in place... before we’ d even get funding from the government, and all of that would have to happen by September 30,” Slowski said.
The school board is still completing the process, but can’ t offer a timeline on when the census might be completed.
“It’ s really just a waiting game, waiting for each step and hoping that it happens as quickly as possible,” Slowski said. “We’ re still hopeful that it’ s all going to be completed, but for now it’ s just a matter of when it’ s going to be completed.”
