EMSB seeks ways to bring students back

Too many opting for private schools, trustees say

Last year, among the English Montreal School Board’s 1,727 Grade 6 graduates, more than one in five left the board altogether. Rather than sign on with EMSB high schools, the majority of the 382 pupils who left went to the private sector.

For several years now, the EMSB has been trying to find a way of keeping the pupils it has been losing to private schools. There were 235 who moved to private schools in 2011. Its answer in large part is an as-yet-unnamed high school to be housed in the former Wagar High School, closed in 2005 for lack of students.

At many board meetings, reports, proposals and pep talks concerning the unnamed school feature on the agenda. Tuesday’s EMSB agenda was no different. A task force, the Palatucci task force, was to report to the board on progress with planning for the school, time permitting.

“The new school will have a specialized mission, a sports concentration and possibly heritage languages such as Hebrew and Italian,” said Michael Cohen, communications specialist with the EMSB. It would also have access, right across the street, to Côte-St-Luc recreation facilities, including an $18-million aquatic and community centre on Parkhaven Ave. built as an incentive to the school board by the city of CôteSt- Luc. The former Wagar High School now houses the Giovanni Palatucci Facility, which includes the Marymount Adult Education Centre and the John Grant special needs high school. The EMSB hopes the new school will open its doors in 2014.

Among its targeted audience, the EMSB will be trying to attract the students of Bialik High School, a neighbouring private school that the EMSB views as a competitor. Bialik has also been struggling with falling enrolment in recent years, and recently cut 40 members of its staff.

Declining enrolment is also behind a possible move to allow the 162 elementary pupils at St. Dorothy School, in the St-Michel district, and the 204 pupils at John Caboto Academy in Plateau Mont-Royal to share space with Commission scolaire de Montréal schools.