Schools closing protest an all ages event
FIGHT FOR FUTURE: Parents and students head to board offices with more than 11,000 signatures on petition
A busload of parents and children showed up at the Vancouver school board offices Monday, bearing more than 11,000 signatures on a petition calling on the board to save their schools from threatened closure.
The parents, among them a family with four generations of history in the area, were rallying on behalf of three Joyce-Collingwood area schools: Graham Bruce elementary, Guy Carleton elementary and Gladstone secondary. The petition came a day before the board is to receive detailed reports on 12 potential closure targets. The board, which is to make final decisions on closures by December, says provincial funding shortfalls have forced the situation.
Melanie Cheng attended Bruce elementary herself as a child and now has two children at the school, with a third she hopes will be starting kindergarten there next fall.
“It’s a really special school to us,” said Cheng, who was among parents from all three schools who organized the petition drive through the summer. “It’s a great community, it’s one of the more affordable areas in the city.”
Cheng said four generations of her family have attended the neighbourhood’s schools.
“My grandmother went to Carleton, my mom went to Carleton,” she said. “We would hope, my husband and I, because we’re both from the Joyce-Collingwood area, that our kids would stay within this community. I’m not only making this fight for our kids right now but for the future. I don’t want to be out here, fighting for space for my grandkids.”
The schools are among those threatened because they don’t meet the provincially mandated 95 per cent of capacity standard to be eligible for expensive seismic upgrades. Cheng said Bruce is at about 70 per cent of capacity, but new residents will be moving in to the 1,000-plus-unit Wall Central Park development a few blocks away later this year. As well, Westbank Corp. plans a 29-storey condo tower near Joyce-Collingwood SkyTrain station, and plans call for a total of about 2,600 new units in the area within 10 years.
“We have tremendous development right now happening in the Joyce-Collingwood area,” Cheng said. “We were shocked when we found out our school was on a closure list. We have a very active parent group, we have had carnivals for the past four years at our school, we have raised tens of thousands of dollars for new playground equipment. This school is needed now, and it will be needed 10 years from now.”
VSB chair Mike Lombardi blamed the closure threat on the provincial government.
“The provincial government has been chronically underfunding education for more than a dozen years,” said Lombardi, who met the parents and the area’s New Democrat MLA Adrian Dix outside his offices.
The Vancouver board has estimated it could save about $8.8 million a year in operating expenses by closing the 12 schools. As well the 12 schools need $65 million in repairs if they stay open, and an adviser appointed by the province last year found that closing the schools would avoid more than $152 million in seismic upgrades.
Elsewhere in the province, the Richmond school board will decide later this month on up to five closures from a list of 16 schools.
Education Minister Mike Bernier criticized the Vancouver board earlier this summer for refusing to pass a balanced budget as required by the School Act. The ministry says there are 6,500 fewer students in Vancouver than in 2001, a 10 per cent drop, yet funding has gone up by 20 per cent in that same period.