Pembina Hills Public Schools (PHPS) want to rebuild the Alberta Distance Learning via a consolidation of services and staff at the main Barrhead campus, while the online Vista Virtual School would move to the Edmonton and Calgary campuses where the bulk of its students are located.
The Alberta Distance Learning Centre, which is operated by Pembina Hills Public Schools, currently serves more than 600 schools across the province by offering distance education courses that students would otherwise be unable to access.
For instance, a student at a small rural school may be unable to take a Physics 30 course because of a scheduling issue or a lack of other students who will take the class, said Pembina Hills Supt. Dave Garbutt, who is also the ADLC Supt.
The predecessor to the ADLC was the Alberta Correspondence School, which premier Peter Lougheed moved to Barrhead in 1983. It was eventually renamed as the Alberta Distance Learning Centre in 1991.
“(The Barrhead campus) was put there with the intention of providing jobs in the surrounding area,” said Garbutt, noting that Alberta Education funds all the costs associated with the building.
However, as ADLC expanded and added staff, more and more of them were added in Calgary and Edmonton, as well as other campuses.
“And so we’re thinking, why aren’t we actually centralizing out of there? Why would we pay leases in Edmonton and Calgary when we could use that money to serve other school jurisdictions?”
Currently, Pembina Hills has a service agreement with Alberta Education that lasts until August 2019. It was originally supposed to expire this year, but the agreement was extended for a year as the plans for distance education in the future are worked out, said Garbutt.
The idea right now is to consolidate the ADLC at the Barrhead campus, meaning that “down the road, we should see the number of employees at ADLC in Barrhead growing,” he said.
The ADLC is concentrated on the second floor of the Barrhead building, but much of the first floor is used by the province.
“We have a fair number of people that work there now, but we certainly have room for more,” he said.
Meanwhile, Vista Virtual School — Pembina Hills’ online school for elementary, junior high and senior high students — will take up the space in Edmonton and Calgary originally used by ADLC.
Vista Virtual School has continuous enrolment throughout the year, but its enrolment includes as many as 550 full-time and 10,000 part-time students, many of whom are in Calgary and Edmoton.
Garbutt noted that Vista Virtual will have to determine how much of the Calgary and Edmonton campuses they want to utilize.
As for staff, because Vista Virtual and ADLC are fairly similar, Garbutt said they would likely just transition from working for ADLC to Vista Virtual.
“I think as our initial step, we’re going to look at just transferring positions,” he said.
“We’re not looking to just force transfer anybody (up to Barrhead).”
Garbutt stressed that these plans are all set fairly far into the future, not something that will definitively occur this year, or even the next.
“This is a long-term transition plan. We’re not going to hit a switch and suddenly it’s going to be perfect,” he said.
“What I can say is moving forward — and the school board wants to see this — we’re going to rebuild ADLC in Barrhead.”
