English boards face difficult test

Re: “Legault government urges English Montreal School Board to reconsider Galileo decision” (Montreal Gazette, May 3)

The government wants half-empty English schools turned over to French boards to deal with overcrowding.

When a school is shut, many parents face a longer commute to another English school, as well as a sense of loss of community.

It soon becomes tempting to transfer their children to the French school just down the street, accelerating the death spiral of our English institutions.

School commissioners are elected. It would be counterintuitive for commissioners to recommend closing a school that parents want kept open.

Education Minister JeanFrançois Roberge might lack the fortitude to mandate the transfer of more English school board property to the French side, as he did with Riverdale High School — and yet expects the EMSB to voluntarily do so.

It’s bad enough being led to the gallows — worse when you’re expected to put the rope around your own neck.

Robert Williams, Pointe-Claire