Nigel McCarthy, director of education with the Lloydminster Catholic School Division, gave local media a quick tour and rundown of the work currently taking place on the west side of Holy Rosary High School. Taylor Weaver Meridian Source
Look up, look waaaay up.
The cranes are sky high at Holy Rosary High School as work began on the $10 million expansion announced in early July.
Talks of an expansion have been in the works for some time now, as the Lloydminster Catholic School Division (LCSD) recognized the need for more classroom space with an ever-growing student body.
Nigel McCarthy, director of education with the LCSD, took members of the local media on a tour of the worksite on Tuesday afternoon and expressed his excitement to see the structure taking shape.
“We’re looking at the start of the steel construction and really, somewhat, the dimensions of the future building, so you really get a sense of the building that’s going up and what we’re looking forward to and so excited about,” said McCarthy.
Yes, McCarthy was excited to see the steel skeleton being built, but it’s what’s going to go inside the new structure that got him really revved up.
“We have three new science labs that we’re very excited about. They’re purpose-built for senior science, and for our STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) programs, our kinesiology lab, which was designed on the model offered by the University of Waterloo,” he said.
“We have a great new arts centre that’s going in, a double-sized room, as well as work in video game design and coding that’s really going to put us on the cutting edge of some of the 21st-century learning we’ve been talking about, and indeed doing at Holy Rosary for years now.”
Throughout the entire planning process, the student voice has played a key role, with feedback coming from students throughout the LCSD.
“The student voice has been extraordinary through this process. We really started with our teachers and the consultation with them, and there was great imagination in those rooms. And then going out to students in elementary schools and really having them have the opportunity to speak to what they’d like to see in schools gave us some new ideas,” he said.
“It gave us the motivation to deliver on some of these visions, and that’s our biomechanics centre, that’ll be our motors lab, and the new welding centre that’s going in at the school.”
For McCarthy, this expansion is a dream come true, but he noted it’s also a dream come true for the LCSD’s elementary school students who will be attending high school in a few years’ time.
“For me, part of the excitement in watching cranes go up is knowing we’re past issues like supply chain management or the budget or design phase,” he said.
“This is really the phase where everything we’ve done for a year and a half starts to come to fruition.
“Completion date is slated for February 2023, so just 11 months from now we’ll be walking into this building and having some new educational experiences for our students.”
