This year DVSS will turn 50 and a few students who were attending when it opened are planning to gather on August 28 to see how the school has changed.

    DVSS has been “The Place to be Since ’63,” and a few old students are set to have a trip down memory lane.
    This is the 50th year since the Drumheller Composite High School (DCHS), now Drumheller Valley Secondary School (DVSS), was built in Riverside. This ushered in a new era for schools in Drumheller.
    As Drumheller grew, so did the need for schools. For years these were built in communities throughout the valley.  By 1936, the Drumheller School District had built Central School and the Drumheller High School near Parkdale, and 14 cottage schools. There was also the Red Deer Valley School Division, which encompassed Midland, Nacmine, East Coulee, Western Monarch, Wayne and Rosedale.
    In 1963 DCHS opened for students, as part of the Drumheller School Division, it combined a vocational school and high school. It had 14 regular classrooms, as well as science labs, plus a business training area. The vocational section included shops for trades including beauty culture, automotives, electronics, welding, carpentry and drafting. The school included a large library combined gym and auditorium, a cafeteria and a residence capable of housing 100 students.
    While it was a modern state of the art facility, in less than five years a $1 million addition was built on to the school to keep up. This included a kitchen space and a farm mechanics department to the vocational side. The academic area of the school, was also expanded.
    The creation of the school helped usher in a new age for the valley. A few years later Greentree School was built as a junior high school and in 1969, the Drumheller and Red Deer Valley school divisions amalgamated, and education was centralized away from the small cottage schools.
     DCHS has gone through a number of changes through the years including the addition of the junior high program and the international program, which also reopened the dorms.
    In 2011, DCHS reopened as DVSS after an extensive modernization ready to serve the next generation of students in Drumheller
    Russell Bixby was in Grade 11 when the school opened. He received a call from an old high school chum Oscar Lefsky who was planning to come through the valley later this month and was hoping to get a look at his old alma mater.
    Bixby received permission, and since then has been identifying as many people as he can from his old yearbook, inviting them to come have a look.
    He hopes former students from when the school opened can come by DVSS at 3:30 p.m.  on Wednesday August 28 for a photo. This might be a good chance to meet some of your former classroom friends and see how the school looks.

The Starland application was for funding to provide some incentive for its farm based solar project and to develop a toolkit that outlines the application procedures in order to duplicate the program in other communities.

    Starland County is becoming recognized for its innovation with solar power and it continues to work on creating an atmosphere to have alternative energy flourish.
    This comes as the Starland Regional Economic Development Committee received approval for a $50,000 grant to continue their work.
    Starland CAO Ross Rawlusyk explains they applied for funding from the Municipal Climate Change Action Centre (MCCAC). The organization is a partnership of Alberta Environment, Alberta Municipal Affairs, the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA), and the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties (AAMDC).
    “They provide incentive funding,” said Rawlusyk. “They have been working on  sustainable building designs, Greenhouse Gas action tool kits and they fund things like sustainability assessments of buildings.”
    The Starland application was for funding to provide some incentive for its farm based solar project and to develop a toolkit that outlines the application procedures in order to duplicate the program in other communities. He said they have received the funding agreement from the MCCAC and are awaiting the approval from its board.
    “Our basic goal is to get a basic 10 kilowatt farm system built for about $30,000, installed.  Between MCCAC and Starland we want to cover 10 per cent of that,” explains Rawlusyk.
    He says they are hoping to install 10 of these 10 kilowatt systems, and so far they have three up and running. This is even before they have the incentive package completed.
    “Farmers are willing to step up and go ahead anyway and maybe catch up later,” said Rawlusyk, adding last week the County had its annual Agricultural Service Board tour and a solar installation was part of the program.
    “I think I picked up another two or three farmers interested, so I don’t think we’ll have any trouble, in the rural areas, finding enough people to work on this type of project,” said Rawlusyk.
    While they have been making strides in their program, the playing field is ever changing, and, while they work on going forward, other forces are slowing down progress.    
    The Alberta Government took some of the solar funding out of its Growing Forward program. He explains most recently another incentive from the Alberta Electric System Operator for contributing green power into the electrical grid has disappeared.
    “Out of the blue a couple weeks ago it was eliminated.  If you had a solar facility on your farm and you contributed into the grid, they were paying 15 cents a kilowatt, almost double the normal rate of power,” said Rawlusyk. “It gave us stability to keep energy projects so at least you knew what the price was going in. To us it was very valuable. When a farmer talks to you, they want to know that the payback is for their investment.”
    Now a micro generating site will receive just the market value back for energy it contributes to the grid.
    Starland County efforts are not going unnoticed. The World Alliance for Decentralized Energy Canada (WADE Canada) is holding its Annual General Meeting in Delia on August 28-29. On its website, WADE describes the AGM as being in “Starland County, Alberta’s Solar Epicenter.”
    “To me that’s an indication of what the alternative energy market can bring into your area,” said Rawlusyk. “It’s an effort to plod forward, but it does have some rewards. When external groups begin to recognize what you are doing, it is positive."