WINNIPEG – Sir William Osler School will reopen to increase classroom space for French immersion students without affecting other schools, the Winnipeg School Division board announced Monday.
The school will operate as a second site to the French immersion École LaVérendrye for nursery to Grade 1 students, the school division said in a news release. The school division will hold a meeting 6:30-8:30 p.m. May 26 at Kelvin High School to discuss the decision.
“We feel like we are being punished for wanting to send them to immersion,” said Carla Van Gorp, a mother of two École LaVérendrye students.
Starting in the fall her son will have to take a roughly 10 minute bus ride to Sir William Osler School while her daughter would remain at École LaVérendrye.
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“For me personally it’s the busing issue and I don’t want my kids split up,” said Van Gorp.
The future of schools in the area was hotly debated during several months of community consultations, with parents from Earl Grey in particular fiercely opposed to major changes at their school.
“The board agreed that Robert H. Smith and Earl Grey schools will continue unchanged for the 2015-16 school year,” said Mark Wasyliw, chairman of the Winnipeg School Division board.
“In essence, École LaVérendrye will become one school with two sites.”
The small Grant Avenue elementary school, built in 1955 but closed in 1991, has operated as an adult English as an Additional Language school in recent years. It’s about a 10-minute drive from the overcrowded French immersion École LaVérendrye on Lilac Street.
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Renovations to Sir William Osler School will be undertaken to make sure it’s ready for students in September, the board said. A vice-principal from École LaVérendrye will work at Sir William Osler.
The school division is continuing to look for a longer-term solution to find space for French immersion students, including the possibility of making Earl Grey a dual-track French immersion/English school for the 2016-17 school year, the news release says. The school board will also ask for funds from the provincial government to renovate the Sir William Osler gym to current standards and make it a permanent French immersion milieu school, and continue discussions with the province about additions to École LaVérendrye.
The division will also be redrawing the catchment area map to try and ease overcrowding at other schools.
“That is going to be a tough process and people will be upset,” Wasyliw said. “It will take years to do but we are committed to commencing that process and having public hearings.”
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