The entire student body at King George Public School in Peterborough will be relocating to Ridpath Junior Public School in the village of Lakefield next school year.
The Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board issued a letter to parents on Wednesday, stating ongoing upgrades to the King George site are “significant” and that student and staff safety is the main concern for the move.
Once completed, the renovated site will house students at King George and Armour Heights Public School. Construction is expected to begin next June and with scheduled opening in September 2020.
King George currently has 328 students from junior kindergarten to Grade 6.
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“Our safety concerns include not just keeping students and staff safe on school grounds, but also travelling to and from school within a heavy construction area,” stated Jack Nigro, superintendent of education.
The board says the challenges include steep grades, drainage and site preparation work, and heavy equipment traffic combined with bus and normal parent and city traffic.
“Together, these challenges will create an unacceptable safety risk for students, staff and the community during the construction period,” stated Nigro.
The board says Ridpath is move-in ready and has a broad playground with plenty of green space for safe play and outdoor learning and is within a quiet neighbourhood. The school was used until December 2017 when students were transferred to the former Lakefield District Secondary School which is now named Lakefield District Public School.
“We will provide bussing transportation for students each day to and from bus stops near their home to the Ridpath Junior PS site,” the letter states.
The news came as a surprise to mom Katelyn Moore, whose child attends King George Public.
She found out about the news when her child brought home a letter from school. She says parents should have been consulted.
“There’s lots of talk about different things in the school, and this was just never…It stayed in the closet and all of a sudden it showed up,” Moore said.
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Board chair Diane Lloyd says a public consultation with all the school’s parents wouldn’t have worked. She says it would have been difficult to find a solution that appealed to everyone.
“I think what would have happened is that, depending on where parents live, they would have had two or three different avenues people would have liked you to go down,” Lloyd said. “None of them would have put all the kids in the same building.”
That, Lloyd said, was a big part in the decision to transfer students to Ridpath for the year.
She says board staff couldn’t find another school in Peterborough that would have kept the student body together, or that was properly equipped for elementary school students.
Ridpath, she says, is a good solution.
“It’s the right size, and it’s just recently empty, it’s in great shape, it’s in a quiet area of town and it’s just a wonderful, safe place to put all those kids for a year,” Lloyd said.
The school board is also reviewing before and after-school care to “maintain this service for parents as best we are able.”
A public meeting on the relocation will be held on Dec. 3 at 6 p.m. at King George Public School.
More to come.
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