With just weeks to go before two English schools are turned over to the French system, parents of kids dealing with the change are feeling a lot of anxiety.
Whether it’s those with kids moving to a new school, or those at schools getting an influx of new students, many unanswered questions remain.
“My daughter is anxious,” said Antonio Caruso, whose eight-year-old daughter had been going to General Vanier Elementary until this past school year.
“My daughter has been affected.”
On Wednesday there was a moving truck outside General Vanier. Bits and pieces of the school could be seen filling dumpsters, a scene that Zaruso says hurts him deeply.
“It’s like having your insides ripped out in one shot,” he told Global News.
This fall, the building is becoming a French school for the overcrowded Commission Scolaire Pointe-de-L’ile. The English Montreal School Board’s idea is for the entire General Vanier community to move intact to Pierre de Coubertin Elementary a few kilometres away.
“The goal, of course, is for all the students from General Vanier to go to that building — the same staff, the same fellow students,” explained EMSB spokesman Mike Cohen.
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Zaruso thinks that’s a good idea for the older kids.
“If there’s any silver lining in all that, it’s for the grade 6 kids in particular, who are going to be graduating from grade 6. Frankly, they deserve it,” said Zaruso.
However, he wonders about the benefits for everyone else, as the solution is not a long-term one.
“It just prolongs the anguish and the pain, because you still have to move,” Zaruso said. “As much as they’re saying ‘we’re doing this to save the community’ and whatever, they haven’t saved anything. All they’ve done is put us on life support.”
Zaruso, a member of the General Vanier governing board, said his daughter would be going to Dante School instead of Pierre de Coubertin.
“It’s going to be a new beginning, because I don’t feel like going to a school where it’s not really us. She would rather start fresh,” he explained, adding that his daughter made the decision herself.
Meanwhile there were moving trucks at Pierre de Coubertin on Wednesday, too.
Parents of students there have their own worries about the coming influx of General Vanier students.
“Will there be a disparity in the quality of education between the two communities?” wondered parent Maria Corsi. “Will we have the same level of services and education as in previous years? We just don’t know.”
Corsi says she and other parents are open to welcoming the General Vanier students, but she said she was unhappy to learn about the change in the media instead of from school authorities.
“The same way they offered opportunities for the General Vanier community to express its wishes, they could’ve checked in with the PDC community,” she told Global News.
Also creating unease is the fact the EMSB has not formally adopted the General Vanier to PDC transfer.
“It’s still a proposal. It will be voted on August 14th, but it seems the best idea under the circumstances,” said Cohen.
“The classrooms are already being prepared, administration offices are being built, and it’s still under consultation,” said Corsi.
The EMSB will be holding a meeting on August 12th to address parents’ questions.
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