The Greater Victoria Teachers’ Association is asking the Victoria School District to open up closed schools to keep students out of portables.
This comes as districts around the province race to find space for students to meet last year’s Supreme Court Decisions for smaller classroom sizes.
“Certain schools are under-capacity, and certain schools are overcapacity,” said Jason Gammon, the association’s president.
He says those schools that are overcapacity are within close proximity to schools that were closed over a decade ago.
“In my opinion, easy to re-open, meaning that they are being leased to other organizations, so they are safe.”
More than 60 additional classrooms are expected in the district this September.
“Bringing portables in is a temporary measure, our concern right now is that it’s near the end of June and those portables are not on site yet, are they going to be ready for September?”
Gammon says they first floated the idea by the Greater Victoria Teachers’ Association weeks ago but says it was shot down for the time being by the school district.
“It was back in March or April at a board meeting where a trustee brought a motion that was passed that they wouldn’t even look at it until November, so right away that motion killed any hope of any schools reopening by September.”
Gammon says a report on reopening closed schools is due from the district in November.
Meanwhile, Greater Victoria School District superintendent Piet Langstraat says the committee is looking at school boundaries first and those discussions will pave the way for the possibility of schools reopening.
“Enrolment priority discussions has been going on throughout the school year, and it’s going to the board Monday night, and the board may make a decision there, which will then inform what we need to do in terms of potentially reopening the schools. Any changes of reopening the schools would potentially be for 2018.”
Langstraat says the report to consider the idea is due this November.
“We would actually need to examine school boundaries and look at changing those and ensuring within the catchment area there’s the right number of students to actually populate the school as we reopen it, it’s actually a complex process to reopen a school.”
Seven elementary schools closed between 2003 and 2007 because of low enrolment.
Langstraat says about 150 new teachers are needed for September.
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