Education and healthcare are provincial responsibilities

The City collects the Provincial Education Requisition (the education tax portion of your annual property tax bill) on behalf of the province. This year alone, residents of Airdrie will contribute nearly $50 million dollars for school operational funding in Alberta.

The Province provides ongoing support and funding for the operations of Airdrie’s schools. This chart outlines the years that Airdrie was allocated capital funding for school construction, upgrades or pre-construction work.

It’s important to note that planning and design dollars are pre-steps for allocating funding for the construction of new schools. The need for more schools in Airdrie exists now, and it takes 3-5 years to build a new school.

Modular classrooms also help relieve space pressures within existing schools and significant provincial funding was allocated towards this type of support for schools. Information on what school divisions will receive modular classrooms has not yet been released. Rocky View Schools requested eight modular classrooms for Airdrie schools in 2025.

Facts about schools and education needs in Airdrie

• RVS welcomed 286 new students in Airdrie as of September 2024, for the 2024/25 school year.
• 2014 was the last time a high school was opened in Airdrie when our population was 54,891.
• The utilization rate of all Airdrie high schools - including all school divisions in the City is 104% (RVS high schools alone are 110% utilized in 2024/25.)
• In RVS, grade configurations and accommodation plans for schools across Airdrie will change beginning in September 2025 to help balance the existing student spaces until new schools approved by the provincial government in 2024 and 2025 can be designed, built and opened.
• Airdrie has seven serviced school sites ready for construction. Two additional sites will be serviced by September 2025.

In recent years, the Government of Alberta allocated:

• $2 million for planning for One Health Airdrie’s integrated primary and urgent care facility.
• $3 million for the planning of a North Calgary/Airdrie Regional Healthcare Centre (Originally allocated in 2023 and recommitted in the 2024 and 2025 provincial budgets as the funding was unused as Alberta Health restructuring occurred.) 
  It’s important to note that planning dollars are not a commitment for a hospital and even with committed construction funding, it takes years to build, staff and open a large healthcare facility.

• $8.4 million for upgrades to the Airdrie Urgent Care Centre
  These upgrades have begun! More information will be shared here on the plans and progress.

Reasons why we need to advocate for healthcare:

• Airdrie Urgent Care Centre (AUCC) expanded operating hours to offer health services 24 hours a day, seven days a week in April 2017. 
• AUCC currently offers 13 treatment spaces, x-ray and limited laboratory testing. That is one space per 6,600 residents. (That's more than 3 times the number in other urban centres.)
• AUCC sees upwards of 46,000 patients per year, reporting an average of 139 patients per day with peak volumes recently surpassing 150 per day.
• On average, 20 patients per day leave without being seen or against medical advice, frustrated at the length of wait. This does not include those patients who walk in, see an overcrowded waiting room and decide to leave before checking in.
• In the summer of 2022, due to staffing challenges, AUCC had to temporarily reduce services for a five-week period. The facility returned to 24/7 service August 19.

Source: Alberta Medical Association, Communities in Crisis Report, Airdrie.