Calgary School Reviews

School Location

Situated on 8.58 acres, Bowcroft School is located in the northwest community of Bowness, serving the community of Bowness. Students from the Regular English Program and the German Bilingual Program move on to Thomas B. Riley for Grades 7 to 9 and then to Bowness High School.

About the School

Until January 24, 1953, Bowness students had been schooled in various church basements, the Scout Hall, the eight-room Main School, renamed Parkway (now Belvedere Parkway), then four-room Viscount Bennett School (now R.B. Bennett) and briefly, even the Legion.

January 25th, 1953 saw three classes of 1 to 3 move into the partially completed main floor of the "old wing" of Bowcroft Elementary. By that fall, the main floor was completed with six classrooms, a gym half its present size and a small room doubling as the office and staff room (now the nurse's room).

Registration of new students was unexpectedly heavy, making it impossible to accommodate all students. Fortunately, the school had been constructed for the addition of a second story. An additional seven classrooms on the second floor were ready to receive students by January 1954.

The opening ceremony of Bowcroft Elementary School was held February 19, 1954. Four hundred students, parents, taxpayers and city dignitaries attended. The Calgary Herald hailed Bowcroft as 'one of the most modern school buildings' in the Calgary district. In 1967, a new brick addition was built.

Today, Bowcroft is a vibrant school, embracing such projects as the German Bilingual program, Big Brother & Sisters, and Calgary Reads. The school utilizes both computer platforms (Windows XP and Macintosh). The local network serves a computer lab, library media area and classroom computers. The school is connected to the Calgary Board of Education's Wide Area Network which offers student email services, internet services, and staff access to student information services.