It will be some time before students go to class in a new school building in Colville Lake, N.W.T, but residents are looking forward to that day — and thinking about what the community’s needs in the future will be.

“We’re very busy here, everyday, day in, day out,” Colville Lake School principal Mitchell MacDonald said in an interview with the CBC’s Shannon Scott on Trailbreaker.

Currently, classes for the 55 enrolled students at the school operate out of four separate buildings.

The so-called ‘Big School’, or main log building, is divided into four rooms, where students range from grades four to 12, but high school students also use the nearby youth centre for school. Students from junior kindergarten to grade three are in another building, and the community gym is utilized for physical education classes.

Rachele Blancho graduated from the school in 2024, and feels she missed out with her high school experience.

“I finished my high school in a log building, I never got to experience being in a real school,” Blancho said. “In high school it was kind of hard, because you could hear noise from the other classrooms and it’s hard to focus.”

In the meantime, they’re doing what they can with what’s available now, but looking forward to what the new school could mean for the community.

Linda Manuel teaches Dene Kǝdǝ́ classes at the school, and she says the classroom arrangement makes it challenging for her.

“There’s two, three other classrooms here, so we have to keep it low, we can’t be noisy,” Manuel said. “The space is so small. We’re trying to do something, the next classroom can hear everything.

“Some things I want to teach, I’m not teaching because of the other classrooms.”

“Having the new facility will provide a little bit more opportunities for our students, probably retain educators in our community for longer, and offer our students a little bit more that we may not be able to offer now,” school principal MacDonald added.

Wishlist for new school

Looking ahead, MacDonald said he has ideas for what the new school could have, with one main feature: It needs to be under one roof.

“We need everything under one building, a full sized gym, storage space, a staff room, bathrooms for students and staff, a cultural learning space…a full sized kitchen, a full sized library…the full sized learning spaces are essential.”

MacDonald said the new school could also feature a daycare, a community fitness space residents could also utilize in the evenings, and a freezer so any food gathered on the land could be stored and used for the school’s food programs.

Blancho said she’d want a new gymnasium, lockers for students, and bigger rooms for classes and cultural activities.

“They really need a new school where they could just stay in one spot for the whole day, especially in the cold,” Blancho said.

New school years away

Plans are in the early stages to build a brand new school building in the community, located in the Sahtu Region of the Northwest Territories.

Officials say work is underway to confirm a location, and the community will have a say in the ultimate design for the school — but it will still take time.

“Roughly about three years, they still have to have community discussions on how the school is going to look,” Joseph Kochon, Senior Administrative Officer for Behdzi Adha’ First Nation, said.

“This is a good opportunity for the community to take part, rather than just: ‘This is what you get.'”

Kochon said the First Nation hopes to put out RFPs, or request for proposals, on this project in about a year.

“We waited this long, we’re just happy we’re making progress,” Kochon said. “This type of stuff is expensive, so the government has to budget and also lobby to get the funds, those things take its course.”