Picard rescue should not come at cost to southeast
The parental lobby that removed J.H. Picard school from the chopping block Monday night scored an impressive victory for a mature urban community. But the success of this vocal, hardworking group comes at significant cost.
For starters, now that the Catholic school board has decided not to shutter Picard, the tab for much-needed renovations to the decades-old school building on 99th Street and 70th Avenue could be as much as $12 million. Trustees will now be seeking those taxpayer dollars from the provincial government as part of their capital plan, and are asking parents who opposed the closure of Picard so passionately to help the board lobby the government for the renovation money.
The board had planned to spend money instead on a new French immersion junior-senior high school, with a capacity of 750 students, that would have been built in a unique partnership with the City of Edmonton and located in a growing community in southeast Edmonton.
Plans for that Silver Berry school, which would have cost the board $28 million, included a theatre that would act as the anchor of a fine-arts program and would also be available for public use. It was to be located in a sprawling complex of sports fields, a recreation centre housing a gym and arena, a library and a public school.
The neighbouring amenities would have made it possible for the new Catholic school to also house sports academies, perhaps for hockey and soccer. And it had been suggested that securing government funds for a project that would bring French-immersion programs to the burgeoning suburbs would be easier than selling Alberta Education on the need to revitalize an aging school with an enrolment of 658 kids between kindergarten and Grade 12.
A Catholic board report last June projected declining elementary school enrolment at Picard over the next five years, while junior- and senior-high numbers are expected to remain stable before increasing in 2015.
Statistics aside, the proposal was not popular with parents of kids in the Catholic system. A survey showed that only 39 per cent of respondents approved of the plan to close Picard and move students in grades 7 to 12 to the new school. Elementary kids would have been able to enrol in schools near Picard. The survey prompted the board to initially label Picard as its top priority for modernization. It subsequently became the top priority for closure once the partnership project with the city gained traction.
If quality of education had been the sole or even the central issue in this debate, it would have been difficult to make a case against a new building with more and better facilities located near appealing amenities for youth and families. Certainly, transportation would have become an issue for some parents, as the new school would have been located about 15 kilometres southeast of Picard. However, an argument founded on the issue of convenience likely wouldn’t have been as convincing to board members.
Instead, the parents of children at Picard wisely broadened the scope of their dialogue with the board to focus on the impact the school has on the francophone community in that area of the city. They said the school acts as more than a learning centre, that it is a cohesive force, in part because none of its students have to leave Picard for high school to maintain their French immersion education. A seamless French immersion experience is surely desirable, so that point was well taken.
However, Alberta Education is not in the business of urban planning. The ministry is empowered to serve the educational needs of Albertans and it should be funding schools in areas with major population growth, in order to best serve the highest number of students.
It’s not yet clear what the future holds for the interesting Silver Berry project in the southeast. But it would be disheartening if the gains of the Picard community come at a cost to equally deserving families in a newer part of our growing city.