Board to consult school districts on closures
The Vancouver school board will embark on an extensive public consultation with parents, students and communities regarding the potential closures of 11 schools starting Oct. 12.
In a packed public meeting Monday night at Charles Tupper Secondary, trustees voted to push all but one school on the original short list one step closer to possible closures.
“I understand how difficult any conversation about potentially closing schools can be,” VSB chair Mike Lombardi said on Tuesday. “No decisions about closures have been made. The board is committed to consulting with the public and won’t make any decisions before the views of the affected communities have been considered.”
But the promise of public consultation was of little comfort to some parents.
Melanie Cheng, who has been leading the fight to save Graham Bruce Elementary in Renfrew-Collingwood, is baffled why the school remains on the list despite increasing enrolment.
The proposed plan to send Bruce students to Collingwood annex and Grenfell won’t work because combined enrolment figures for the three schools add up to 784 students, exceeding the 712-student maximum capacity of the two receiving schools, said Cheng. And that’s not factoring in extra density coming into the neighbourhood.
“The fact we have to go through public consultation and waste taxpayers’ money on a prolonged procedure to show them obvious figures available at their fingertips is outrageous,” said Cheng, who has two children attending Bruce.
Only Britannia secondary has been removed from the list.
The schools that remain vulnerable to closure are: Champlain Heights annex, Tecumseh annex, McBride annex, A.R. Lord elementary, Seymour elementary, Bruce elementary, Carleton elementary, Queen Alexandra elementary, Trudeau elementary, Gladstone secondary and Queen Elizabeth annex. The board voted to move forward with the potential closures despite the province getting rid of the controversial 95 per cent capacity utilization last week that required districts to meet that capacity in order to receive funding for seismic upgrades.
“(The board) is happy that’s out of the way, but that doesn’t create a situation where all of a sudden the rules have changed,” Lombardi said, noting the district still has to put forward proposals for schools to get seismically upgraded and that the decision is made by the ministry on a case-by-case basis.
A motion asking for a revised set of proposals based on in-catchment-only enrolment and without the 95 per cent overall capacity utilization requirement has been tabled to Monday, Oct. 3 so staff can determine the cost. The community consultation process runs from Oct. 12 to Nov. 18.
Consultation sessions will also be set up for each of the 11 schools. In addition, the board will hold three Vancouver-wide meetings: Oct. 15 at Vancouver Technical, Oct. 23 at Gladstone, and Oct. 29 at John Oliver. Speakers should register in advance.
Affected parents and students can submit their input online at the Vancouver school board website.
The public feedback will be included in a report to committee Dec. 8.
The board will make a final decision on Dec. 12.