CALGARY – For more than four decades, a northwest high school has been welcoming students who haven’t thrived in the traditional classroom.
But high schools across the city will have to make room soon for the students from Sir William Van Horne High now that the Calgary Board of Education has voted to close the facility.
“I don’t know about the future for these children,” said a visibly shaken Gloria Singendonk, a parent who had lobbied hard against the closure for several months.
“All I can do is encourage them to do their best and graduate.”
In a decision that split trustees, the board voted four to three Tuesday night to close Sir William Van Horne High School.
Trustees Lynn Ferguson, Pat Cochrane, Karen Kryczka and Carol Bazinet supported the closure, citing a need for all schools to welcome the most complex learners instead of segregating them.
“We’ve heard from students and parents from Van Horne they want their children to be somewhere where there’s evidence of care, there is a sense of belonging,” said Cochrane.
“I think it is time for the CBE to stand up and say we’re all responsible for each one of these young people and make sure each one of these young people is welcomed in the appropriate school where they belong,” said Cochrane.
But Gordon Dirks, Pamela King and George Lane spoke out to save Van Horne and its ability to reach students with complex learning challenges who might otherwise drop out.
“I still, in my heart of hearts, feel we are asking the wrong students to take a leap of faith. . . . There are so many schools where that caring (and acceptance of students with special needs) is not there. That is why these students are having success at Van Horne,” said King.
“I’m concerned about the kids we’re going to lose along the way until we get to that point.”
Sir William Van Horne High was created in the mid-1960s as a vocational school.
It was designed to instruct nearly 1,000 students. But in recent years, the number of students dipped so that by this fall, only 295 teens were enrolled in its programs.
The decision to close the school has created strife among the small but vocal student population.
When trustees first discussed the possibility of shutting down the facility in February, a group of teens gathered outside the school board office, carrying signs and chanting “save our school loud” enough for trustees to hear inside the board room.
There has been a flood of passionate letters and presentations to the school board about the willingness of staff to meet students facing several life challenges and support them in their struggle to graduate.
Dirks echoed the fear of many parents and students that if teens are sent back to regular high schools, they will fall through the cracks.
“There are some pretty . . . deeply felt concerns that it would be a bit of naive idealism to say all of these students (when put back) in their regular high schools, they would make it,” he said.
But district staff stressed that students would have access to a wider variety of courses and extracurricular activities at more traditional high schools. Government-funded supports for students with unique learning needs would follow them to their new high schools.
And additional learning supports can also be put into place to help meet the needs of former Van Horne students at their new schools, just as they were when Lord Shaughnessy High, another vocational school, was disbanded, said chief superintendent Naomi Johnson.
Current students will have a one-year reprieve before being required to transfer to another high school, as the closure would not take place until the end of the 2010-2011 school year. But the move will mean increased enrolments at other north Calgary high schools.
Trustees unanimously approved a plan to move Juno Beach Academy of Canadian Studies from Lord Shaughnessy High School to Dr. Norman Bethune School for the fall.
This is the second time the alternative program has changed schools in the past six years. But parents have largely supported the idea as it will finally allow Juno Beach to occupy its own building instead of sharing space with other programs as it has at two previous schools.
Tuesday’s votes wrap up a slate of school closure debates in Calgary.
The Calgary Catholic School District was able to find a way to preserve its St. Angela School in Bridgeland, after a parent-led campaign to rescue the elementary proposed converting it into a school that caters to working parents.
Families at two other CBE schools weren’t so fortunate.
Earlier this year, the CBE trustees approved the closure Queensland Downs and Eugene Coste schools. The board has also agreed to changes at four other schools that would see some programs shut down but the facilities remain open.
Meanwhile, in Edmonton, hundreds of parents waited anxiously on Tuesday to learn the fate of their children’s schools as the Edmonton Public School Board voted on the closure of five central Edmonton schools and the conversion of grades offered at a sixth facility there.
smcginnis@theherald.canwest.com
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