Parents say school closures would be ‘blow’ to community
Carleton is one of 12 facilities under consideration for chopping block
Parents, students and staff in a yellow-frame building at Carleton elementary school on Kingsway said goodbye Tuesday to the building that had been their home.
Next year the yellow-frame schoolhouse, built in 1910, will be shuttered and students will be centralized into a brick building on the same grounds that was built in 1912. Neither has been seismically upgraded. In the following school year, students may be saying goodbye to the brick building as well and moving either to MacCorkindale or Cunningham elementary schools, if a plan to close schools goes ahead.
“We’re very sad,” said Ann Wong, mom and former parent advisory-council chairwoman. Her son just graduated from Grade 7 at Carleton. “We feel that we are being punished for supporting our school. We feel that time and again Carleton is being picked on. We have excellent students and excellent teachers.”
Carleton is one of 12 schools on a Vancouver school board list to be considered for possible closure a year from now.
The move to close classrooms, which is the reason for closing the yellow-frame building at Carleton and distinct from the school-closure process, is designed to save $140,000 throughout the district, at an average savings of $1,450 per classroom.
Vancouver-Kingsway MLA Adrian Dix says the plan to shut three schools with 1,547 students in his riding is a “really bad decision,” particularly since developments in the area are slated to add 3,600 new homes.
The possible closure of these schools is a “blow to our community,” said Dix, Wong and Melanie Cheng, parent and PAC executive member of Bruce school, which is also on the potential closure list.
“These are both excellent, viable, dynamic public schools that are part of the area and Vancouver’s history,” they said in a letter protesting the closures to city council.
“It is impossible to imagine our neighbourhood without them.”
The third school being considered for closure in Dix’s riding is Gladstone Secondary.
The Wall Centre Central Park will add 1,014 homes to the Bruce catchment and the Joyce-Collingwood Station Precinct Plan is slated to add 2,600 homes to the area, Dix said.
Cheng is a lifelong resident of the neighbourhood. She went to Bruce herself and her mother and grandmother went to Carleton. She has three kids, who she hopes will all finish their elementary-school education at Bruce.
“I’m really concerned that we’re going to turn into one of those areas where families come in because it’s affordable, but there will not be enough spaces in schools,” Cheng said.
These are both excellent, viable, dynamic public schools that are part of the area and Vancouver’s history.