Board votes to close east-central Alberta village’s school

Innisfree will have its only school, which serves 54 students from Grades 1 through 12, close at the end of this year.

A village east of Edmonton is closing its school.

Innisfree’s Delnorte School will close at the end of the school year in June, Mayor Evan Raycroft said Wednesday night in a social media post.

The board of trustees for the Buffalo Trail Public School Division voted 4-3 on Wednesday night to close the school of 60 students from Grades 1-12.

Buffalo Trail Public Schools said last month it was reviewing the plan for the future of Delnorte School, considering “enrolment trends, program delivery, financial considerations, and the needs of students and the Delnorte–Innisfree community.”

Innisfree, which is home to 205 people, is 131 kilometres east of Edmonton, tucked behind a ridge just north of Highway 16 at Highway 870 overlooking Birch Lake.

Buffalo Trail’s board of trustees had passed a motion in late January “to investigate the complete or partial closure, including the reduction of grade(s) or division(s), of Delnorte School for the next school year.”

That included gathering feedback from the community at a meeting in late February. The process had started in November, when the board authorized the division superintendent to conduct a formal review of the school.

Raycroft called the move “a heart-wrenching blow” but added, “This isn’t the end of our school and education in Innisfree; it’s a new chapter, a chance for something grander, larger, and even more extraordinary.”

The Buffalo Trail division includes 26 schools and covers an area of about 15,500 kilometres that stretches about 125 kilometres east of Highway 36 near Lavoy to the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, and about 125 kilometres between Dewberry south to Provost.