Overcrowded Stoney Creek schools to receive temporary relief

New public elementary students moving into upper Stoney Creek’s Nash neighbourhood will be bused to Tapleytown school, rather than Billy Green, once the school being built in the Summit Park survey opens.

Senior facilities manager David Anderson said boundary changes in September 2019 won’t affect 104 students in the Nash neighbourhood presently being bused to Billy Green, or their younger siblings.

Even so, Billy Green’s enrolment is expected to gradually decline, allowing the school to remove its eight portable classrooms, he told trustees on the school board’s finance and facilities committee.

But Anderson said Tapleytown will likely no longer be able to take any more Nash students by 2022, despite losing 161 existing students who will be within walking distance to Summit Park.

Construction on Summit Park — to be located near the corner of Fletcher Road and Bellagio Avenue — is expected to begin in June or July and the 625-pupil school will also draw 180 students from Janet Lee, ending the need for four portables.

While Summit Park will only be 60 per cent full when it opens, Anderson said boundary options are limited by provincial guidelines requiring an accommodation review if a school moves more than half of its enrolment to another school.

The boundary changes fall below the threshold because Tapleytown and Janet Lee are losing 45 per cent and 42 per cent of enrolment, respectively, to Summit Park, he said.

Trustees initiated a boundary review last year and the changes got the most support of three options at an April 3 meeting.

Stoney Creek trustee Jeff Beattie, who supported the changes, said the restriction on moving more than half of a school’s students thwarted an advisory panel’s ability to find a better plan.

“There wasn’t really a winning option anywhere,” Beattie said. “It was an exhaustive process and there were a lot of different permutations and combinations that were examined, and we kept on coming up with options that were less desirable.”

Beattie said sending new Nash students to Tapleytown is a short-term solution because the school, which already has four portables, is projected to be nearly double its building capacity of 291 students by 2022.

He suggested the board can at least temporarily send overflow students to one of the three lower Stoney Creek schools scheduled to close once Collegiate Avenue is expanded and Eastdale and Memorial are rebuilt.