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The sky isn’t falling, says Edmonton Public School Board chair Michelle Draper.

She doesn’t want to sound like Chicken Little, she told the Edmonton Journal editorial board Monday.

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But you don’t have to be Ducky Lucky to find the numbers alarming.

By 2020, the Edmonton Public School District estimates it will have at least 500 more high school students than it has room for in its buildings.

By 2022, there will be more than 2,000 public high school students with no place to go to classes.

And by 2025? If it doesn’t get funding for new schools, Edmonton Public projects that it will have more than 6,000 high school students it cannot accommodate in its existing schools — the bulk of them in Edmonton’s booming southern suburbs — leaving schools such as Harry Ainlay, Strathcona, J. Percy Page and Lillian Osborne bursting at the seams.

Photo by Ed Kaiser / Postmedia

“We’re pleased with the asks that we have been given to date, but we need more,” Draper told the Journal. “We need a high school in the next three years, when we reach capacity.”