Morinville's Notre Dame Elementary will get a lot bigger this week after crews finish moving seven portable classrooms into place.
Crews spent most of Monday moving a large portable classroom from Georges P. Vanier School to its new home at Notre Dame. The move was a result of the province's decision earlier this summer to transfer ownership of Vanier to the Sturgeon School Division.
Bob Hanna, who was in charge of the move, said he was surprised to get the call to move the portables from Vanier, given that his company just put them there last December.
"When these units were put in last year, I don't think they were put in with the mindset of moving them eight months later," he said, laughing.
Schoolroom shuffle
The province designated the Sturgeon School Division as the public board in Morinville earlier this year in response to concerns from residents who wanted a secular, public education for their kids. (Prior to this change, all the schools in town were Catholic.)
In around June, the province and the St. Albert Catholic board gave Vanier to Sturgeon so it would have a permanent school in town. The Catholic board is now adding portables to Georges H. Primeau and Notre Dame to take on the students displaced from Vanier.
Notre Dame principal Marlene Pelletier was busy Monday directing movers as they unloaded six shipping containers of stuff hauled in from Vanier.
"Apparently, this one here in front is 50,000 pounds," she said, referring to one of the containers. Her school's halls were crammed with desks, shelves, chairs and boxes as a result.
Notre Dame should have seven additional portables by the end of the week, Pelletier says, and a new paved parking lot and drop-off lane by Sept. 3. Grades 3 and 4 students will go in the portables, while everyone else will go to the main building.
Five of those portables are newly-built and shipped in from the plant in Crossfield, Alta., said Hanna, president of Triple H Building Movers. The other two came from Vanier.
Four of the new portables were placed on site at Notre Dame last week, with the last one set to arrive Wednesday.
Heavy rains made moving the ones from Vanier a little tricky, Hanna said, as it turned the ground into mud.
"The first time we tried to lift [the building], everything just punched straight down into the ground," he said.
His crews had to throw wooden blocks and steel rig-matting under the hydraulic jacks to give them more support, and ended up delaying the move of the second portable to Thursday.
Once the 26-tonne buildings were about three feet off the ground, Hanna's crews backed a low-riding flatbed trailer underneath, lowered the buildings, and hauled them through downtown Morinville, where barricades and no-parking zones had cleared a path for their truck.
"We've had great co-operation from the town," Hanna said.
The units were then lowered onto screw-piles on the north side of Notre Dame.
It was René Dubeau's job to set up the portables once they got there.
"Most of these come as turnkey units," said the project manager for Jen-Col Construction. "They kind of go together like Lego."
Dubeau's crews spent the week hooking up utilities to the portables and building the new parking lot. The portables will initially be linked to the rest of the school by an overhead box-beam for the pipes and wires, Dubeau said. Crews will build an enclosed corridor sometime next year.
The new portables are much better than the 1970s-era ones currently hooked to the school, Pelletier said.
"They're bright and cheery," she said, as they have long banks of windows, and have plenty of power outlets for computers.
"I can see teachers almost fighting to be in the portables."
The weather has been a challenge, Pelletier said, but so far everything seems to be on schedule.
"Everything should be ready to roll by September," he said.
