DARTMOUTH, NS – Parents at Shannon Park School in Dartmouth are worried the school may not be open next year.
The elementary school is currently owned by the federal government, but they put it up for sale a year ago and gave the school board first right of refusal.
At the time, the Halifax Regional School Board asked the province to purchase the school on their behalf, so that they could keep it open.
But the deadline for that deal runs out this month, and the province has not yet announced any decision.
Gin Yee, school trustee for Darmouth region, told Global News Education Minister Karen Casey promised she will make a decision by the deadline and he is confident she will keep her word.
Yee said he has lobbied her personally about keeping the school open. “My colleagues, my governing board colleagues, want this school to be purchased,” he said. “They’ve voted ‘yes’ on it on multiple times.”
Diana Graff registered her youngest daughter for kindergarten at the school on Wednesday, but told Global News, she is concerned her daughter won’t actually be there in September.
“She’s been looking forward to coming here since she was a baby, because we’ve been dropping my oldest off,” she said. “Now we don’t know where she’ll be going.”
Graff’s other daughter is in Grade 3 and is devastated that she may have to leave the school, according to Graff.
“She’s very upset about the idea of moving to an English-speaking school or just losing her friends,” she said. “Because they would all go to different schools.”
Frank Yunace, chair of the school advisory council, told Global News the school was very welcoming to his daughter when she started there two years ago. He said he has written to several MLAs to try to keep the school open, but said that he didn’t get any answers to his questions.
“It’s the not knowing that’s the hardest,” Yunace said. “Here were are in April, parents have already signed up kids for kindergarten.”
Shannon Park School is the only early French Immersion school in Dartmouth and has more than 500 students.
The area is a former Department of National Defence (DND) site dating back to 1949. In March 2014, Canada Lands Company acquired most of the surrounding land and buildings, approximately 82 acres of the 96.5 acres, according to the Canada Lands Company website.
The area around the school has mostly sat empty since DND personnel started leaving in 2003.
The purchase price for the school is $313,000, but it also requires about $1.5 million in upgrades.
Melissa Robinson said she currently has four kids attending Shannon Park, but said she thinks it would be best for the school to close.
“It’s an older school,” she said. “It needs a lot of work and as nice as it would be to have the security to know where my kids will be going to school next year, I think the school has come to the end of its life.”
On Thursday, Minister Casey told confirmed that the province would make its decision by the deadline, but would outright confirm that the province will buy the school.
“The conversations are very positive,” she said.
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