A group of Calgary parents said they are frustrated over a decision by the Calgary Board of Education to implement a lottery system for North Trail High School.

The lottery, which is scheduled for Feb. 12, is part of a decision made by the CBE to “ensure fair and equitable” access to schools with a student population at, or over, capacity.

According to the CBE’s website, unsuccessful students will be overflowed to designated overflow schools and placed on a call-back list based on priority.

Priority 1 students are those living within a school’s walk zone that have a sibling who will be attending the same program in the same school, concurrently.

Priority 2 students are those living outside walk zones but in the designated area for the school with siblings in the same program at the same school concurrently. Students living within the walk zone who do not have a sibling in the school are also in this category.

All other students living in the designated attendance area will be in Priority 3.

But Nate Pike, a parent who advocated for the school to be built, said the lottery system was poorly communicated to families who will be affected. Pike said the school was overdue for decades and it was known that the school wouldn’t be able to accommodate all the students in the community.

“So, they’ve known that this is going to be a problem since they started building the thing, but no corrective actions were taken,” Pike told LWC in an interview.

“The way that the communication was handled … The email was so poorly written, and the process that parents and kids are facing was so poorly explained that it did nothing but trigger a great deal of frustration and a great deal of confusion. The communication piece was a train wreck.”

Mike and Jelena Wallace have a daughter starting high school this fall. Both parents said they and other parents in their neighbourhood couldn’t understand the walk zone map that the CBE provided.

According to them, the walk zone does not account for paths and other infrastructure that were built in the neighbourhood to allow kids to walk to school safely.

“That map made no sense at all … The school is not even in the center of this so-called walking zone. They’re calculating it based on driving within a five-minute range,” Mike said.

“My kids have a direct route that would take them 10 to 15 minutes to walk there along a bike path … Why is it that my kid has to literally win a lottery to go to a school 10 minutes from her house? That doesn’t sound like common sense.”

Kids may be separated from their friends, support groups

Ayman Ayyoub is a parent with a son attending North Trail High School and a daughter who will enter Grade 10 in the fall. He said his home is a five-minute walk from the school and called the lottery system “unnecessary.”

He also said the lottery system has been detrimental to the family dynamic. His daughter would rather drop out of school or attend online education rather than be separated from her friends and her brother if she was unsuccessful in the lottery process.

“Don’t they think about these kids who went together to Coventry Hill School and then North Creek School and then North Trail High School? All of a sudden, I have to tell my daughter that she’s going somewhere else, out of all the friends she has, including her brother,” Ayyoub told LWC.

“My daughter already threatened to drop out of school or go online. She’s not going anywhere else.”

Pike said his eldest son, who has Tourette’s syndrome, would be stripped away from his peer group and support system if he is unsuccessful in the lottery.

“It has been a tremendous struggle for him to build a peer group that he is comfortable with because he does have the tics and for a lot of kids, that’s weird and they run away from that, which is really unfortunate,” he said.

“The prospect of him losing that either by being forced to go another high school or members of his peer group being forced to go to another high school has had a huge impact on him.”

Build more schools now

All the parents LWC interviewed said they want more schools and portables built now to address capacity issues at North Trail High School.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced late last year that Alberta will be increasing its K-12 capital budget to $8.6 billion to fast-track school builds over the next three years through the School Construction Accelerator Program. Around 50,000 new student spaces will be built over the next three years and another 150,000 new spaces over the next four years after that. The program will also fund over 20,000 new modular classroom spaces over the next for years.

This also includes projects in Calgary, she said.

However, the program is not expected to be approved until the provincial budget is introduced at the end of February. Schools still have to send their modular classroom and new school requests for approval, and no details were provided about long-term sustainable funding for additional operational and labour costs.

On average, it takes around two to three years to design and prepare a site for construction, followed by another two years to build a school.

“We’ve seen a lot of schools across the city. Anybody who’s grown up in Calgary has seen lots of schools get expanded with portables to supplement growing populations of kids and neighbourhoods. I really don’t see why that’s not being considered now,” Mike said.

Pike said he agrees that the School Constructor Accelerator Program is needed but the timelines were not communicated to parents.

“That is not the messaging that was put out at the time,” he said.

CBE responds

The CBE said it wanted to provide some clarity about the situation in an email to LWC.

In an email just after noon on Wednesday, a CBE spokesperson said the lottery process is aligned with government-defined walk zones to minimize the number of students requiring transportation.

North Trail High School’s walk zone was created to comply with updated legislation from the Alberta government, which dictates that walk zones are calculated based on driving distances along roads instead of walking distances. Under the previous legislation, high school walking zones were based on a 2.4-kilometre walking distance to the edge of the school property. The new legislation reduces the walk zone to two kilometres and measures the distance using driving routes to the school’s main door.

The new standard must be applied by all school boards no later than the 2025-2026 school year. Some families living within sight of the school may not fall within the provincially-defined walk zone as a result, the email read.

“We value our partnership with the provincial government and their efforts to support students and schools. At the same time, we’re taking a closer look at the lottery process to see if there’s a way to make it work better for families in situations like this one,” said Joanne Anderson, a member of the CBE’s media relations team.

“We’re grateful to the families who have shared their feedback and concerns. Their input is important to us, and we will be reviewing the lottery process for the 2026-27 school year.”

The lottery process scheduled for Feb. 12 will still use the 2024-2025 walk zones, Anderson added.