The Foothills School Division received the green light from the provincial government to officially move forward with a pair of capital projects.

FSD has approval from Alberta Education and Infrastructure to carry on with the modernization of Foothills Composite High School and to construct a K-9 school north on 32nd St. in Okotoks.

Drew Chipman, assistant superintendent, says they've began looking at core designs and have some recent experience with school construction.

"We've recently built a K-9, Westmount School is along those lines and I think that's a great school so I think we've got some great expertise as to how we see those types of schools being built and we're excited about moving that forward."

Chipman adds the division will be reaching out for feedback on the designs.

"We'll be bringing an architect online, when I saw 'we' Alberta Infrastructure is probably going to manage this project, we'll have a lot of input" he says. "We'll be working with the community and working with staff to see what the priorities are and then we'll be putting those together and we'll be having some public consultation along those lines too so we'll make sure people have an opportunity to provide input on what they see is important."

The division hopes to have the modernization of FCHS completed around Jan. 2018 and the new school done around fall 2018.