Monday will be a big day for some parents, as kindergarten registration begins for several English Montreal School Board (EMSB) schools.
Several parents have been braving the cold, camping out since Friday at some schools to secure a spot for their children.
Ian Segal arrived Friday afternoon in an effort to secure one of 40 kindergarten spots at Royal Vale School in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.
“We need a good school for our boy,” he said.
Segal is just one of many waiting outside of Royal Vale. The practice of camping out for kindergarten spots has been a tradition there for decades, but it’s not because of overcrowding. Rather, some programs are popular and the school is zone-free, meaning kids from outside the area can attend.
This year, however, lineups have expanded to other EMSB schools in the city’s west end, including Merton and Edinburgh, where overcrowding is an issue.
“We have an overcrowding problem in the west end,” explained EMSB spokesperson Michael Cohen. “We’re very privileged; there’s a great demand now to get into our schools.”
Lineups at Edinburgh School started on Friday. Parents camped out in their cars, hoping to get one of about 17 spots. They say it’s the first time people have lined up for a whole weekend and are blaming the lineups on a lack of space at the school.
“Around this area, there isn’t a lot of English schools that offer French immersion, and we don’t have a lot of room,” said Michal Muallem, one of the parents waiting in her car.
That’s partly why Segal wants to get his son into Royal Vale, even though his family lives just blocks away from Edinburgh.
“They’re missing a science room and a music room and a library,” he said, giving examples of why he’s concerned about the state of things at his neighbourhood school.
Edinburgh School has 400 students, though its capacity is 330.
EMSB officials say they are working on solutions for the west end schools.
“In the fall, we had a situation where we were going to open a brand-new school in NDG, a Francais Plus French immersion school,” said Cohen.
But now, he says, the plan is for an annex for one of the three most overcrowded schools in the area — Edinburgh, Merton and Willingdon. The school board will decide on Feb. 20 which school will receive the annex, even though some Edinburgh parents say they aren’t interested in that as a solution.
“It’s ridiculous,” Muallem said. “It’s going to separate families. They’re not going to drop off one kid at one school and then come to drop off the other.”
Another parent, Mike Picciuto, who was first in line at Edinburgh, agrees.
“I think the best solution is modular classrooms,” Picciuto said. “That’s the extension where they can add classrooms because it would keep everybody together.”
In the meantime, parents say a solution can’t come soon enough, as they fear the lineups will only get worse next year.