Buildings’ future unknown
Cape Breton-Victoria board considering options for former Northside schools
Future uses for former Northside schools remains up in the air as the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board weighs its options.
Both St. Joseph’s Elementary in Sydney Mines and Thompson Elementary in North Sydney sit empty after last year’s school board decision to close 19 schools across the Cape Breton Regional Municipality due to declining enrolment.
Florence Elementary is set to close at the conclusion of this school year and Seton Elementary and Sydney Mines Middle School could close by 2021.
“We are kind of in a holding pattern right now with those buildings,” said Michelle
MacLeod, spokesperson for the school board.
While ownership of many of the schools slated for closure was diverted back to the municipality, the schools that fall under the Northside family of schools remain the property of the school board.
“It goes back to the old school board when it was the Northside District and the Cape Breton District. It is just about what the agreements they had with the municipality at that time.”
That old agreement has left the school board with decisions to make.
For St. Joseph’s, the board has decided to try to sell the building and it has already been put on the market.
The future of Thompson remains unknown.
“There’s no decision yet on that whether they are going to sell it or demolish.”
Across the municipality, some of the other schools that have closed have been the target of vandalism but that has not been an issue with either of the recently closed Northside schools.
For example, the former MacLennan school in Westmount has been targeted by vandalism after it was permanently closed
in July 2016. The municipality has recently said it will be demolishing that building.
Mayor Cecil Clarke and senior Cape Breton Regional Municipality staff discussed the costs of demolishing closed schools during a meeting with the province last week.
The CBRM’s chief financial officer Marie Walsh and economic development manager John Phalen were also be part of those discussions with Zach Churchill, the minister of municipal affairs.