By Joel van der Veen

DAVIDSON — It’s another year of strong enrollment at Davidson School, principal Jason Low reported last week.

The new school year began Thursday, with a total of 261 students registered locally — identical to the count from last year.

This includes 23 children beginning their educational journey in the Kindergarten classroom.

Davidson also welcomes a handful of new staff members this year, including secretary Kelly Allan, who joins Barb Moskaluke in the school office.

The school has two Grade 1 classrooms this year. New arrival Sandra Delorme will oversee one, while Crystal Johnson looks after the other.

Kristin Dolman returns to Davidson to teach Grade 6, while Tenille Kirtzinger, who interned here last year, will teach Grade 4, filling in for a maternity leave.

The school will not have any interns this year — a sharp change from last year, when seven interns were working in Davidson.

Interns are in short supply in general, with a total of five working across all of Sun West School Division.

It’s “quite a different year that way,” said Low, but aside from that it’s mostly business as usual.

A meet the teacher evening is scheduled for Sept. 29, and the Student Leadership Team is organizing its annual Spirit Week beginning on Tuesday.

For the full story, including updates from Craik, Kenaston, Loreburn, Hanley, Dundurn, Imperial, Bethune and Holdfast, please see the Sept. 5 edition of The Davidson Leader or call 306-567-2047 to subscribe today.

By Joel van der Veen

DAVIDSON — Planners and contractors say Davidson’s new pool is less than a month away from being completed and commissioned.

“We’re going to see a lot of finishing work being done in the next three weeks here,” said recreation director Trevor Ouellette, adding that the project has remained on schedule for much of the summer.

Construction began on the new facility in late May and is expected to wrap up by mid-September, allowing the pool to open for the 2017 season.

“I’m extremely pleased with how smooth everything has been,” said the recreation director. “There’s headaches with any construction job, but there haven’t been any major, major ones.”

Davidson’s new pool is classed as a junior Olympic size. It is L-shaped with the largest part being 25 metres long and 17 metres wide, and a beach entry measuring 15 metres long by eight metres wide.

The pool will feature a deck level board, less than one metre high, plus a second board atop a diving tower three metres high.

Five lanes will be available for lane swimming and instructional use. At its deepest, the pool is 3.8 metres deep, or almost 12.5 feet.

The pool has a capacity of 690,000 litres, or about three times the size of the old pool. The facility will be equipped to allow future expansion, such as a slide or other fixtures.

It uses five sand filters and four pumps, each capable of pumping out 150 gallons of water per minute.

Once landscaped, the facility will include a grassy area measuring about 17,000 square feet, easily dwarfing the 400 sq. ft. lawn adjacent to the old pool, along with a common area between the pool and poolhouse of about 3,000 square feet.

The building, about 1,700 square feet in size, will include both the mechanical rooms and the change areas.

For the full story, please see the Sept. 5 edition of The Davidson Leader or call 306-567-2047 to subscribe today.