Langdon residents demand province to provide new school for their community

Langdon residents press the province Residents who live in the Hamlet of Langdon are demanding the province to fund a school in their community.

Residents who live in a small hamlet east of the City of Calgary say they are in desperate need of a new school to help ease the pressure of their growing population.

Members of the community of Langdon are planning to hold a rally on Sunday evening to push the province to provide funding they need to establish the school that has been on the priority list of the Rockyview School Division for some time.

Residents say that 30 percent of the approximately 5,000 people who live in Langdon are under the age of 15 and the current enrollment of the schools in the area increases by 250 students every year.

Currently, high school students who live in Langdon have to be bussed to school in Chestermere but even that won’t last because that location is forecasted to be over capacity in less than two years.

The hamlet has a site available for a new school, that will also serve as a recreation centre, but the province didn’t provide any money for a school in the budget.

Chrissy Craig, chair of the Langdon Community Association, says the huge 40-acre site will be the future of the community.

"There's going to be a high school and rec centre on one side and there's going to be a baseball diamond. It's going to be a centre for the community to gather, to come together and just be the huge centrepoint of our community."

She says that they've already put about $7M into the project, supplied through fundraising, and it's all ready to go.

"It's serviced and all of that sort of stuff [but] the delay is the Alberta government. We need approval for the high school as [it] is desperately needed in the area. We have more kids than we know what to do with, our school is already over capacity and without that high school, then we can't move to the future developments on this land."

Lisa Baker, who has lived in Langdon since 2014, has two children who attend elementary school and would love to see them attend high school in Langdon in the future.

"It's not only to keep our kids local and off of the highways which have had some pretty tragic accidents lately, but also to relieve the stress on the Chestermere High School as well so that they have some more wiggle room for their children."

The rally will take place at 8:00 p.m. at the Langdon Fieldhouse Garage.