VANCOUVER – Parents at Vancouver elementary schools are mobilizing for a back-to-school season in which a dozen elementary schools face possible closure.
Charles Dickens annex parents are hosting a work party Wednesday evening, while anxious parents at Henry Hudson elementary have been conducting an e-mail and telephone campaign over the summer.
Patti Bacchus, the Vancouver board of education chairwoman, said the school closure process will make the fall challenging, especially because a number of senior staff have recently left.
In June, VSB staff presented a list of 12 schools for possible closure as a way of reducing costs and excess capacity. The elementary schools are Bruce, Carleton, Hudson, Macdonald, Queen Alexandra and Seymour. The annexes are Champlain Heights, Collingwood, Dickens, Kerrisdale and McBride. A sixth annex – Garibaldi – was notified earlier that its future is also uncertain.
Parents at Henry Hudson elementary became emotional when they heard the school might close, said Robert Ford, parent advisory council chairman at the Kitsilano school.
“Even just the pre-notification put a lot of people into mama-bear mode,” Ford said.
Amanda Wood, a parent at Dickens annex, said many people were upset that their community school was on the list.
“One of the things that’s been very frustrating for us is that the provincial government has pitted schools against each other, so that there’s this competition between schools, which has been kind of a red herring as the government is not giving enough funds to the school board to maintain the school system,” Wood said.
Ford is cautiously optimistic that since all of Hudson’s neighbouring schools are full, Hudson will ultimately be spared.
“What are you going to do with the kids? If you can’t answer that then everything else is moot,” said Ford, who has a daughter entering Grade 4 at the school, as well as a two-year-old son that he hopes will be able to attend the school, too.
Hudson is a dual track French immersion and English school, which takes some overflow students from the popular Elsie Roy elementary in Yaletown and from False Creek elementary.
The Dickens community on Vancouver’s east side is planning more than just a letter-writing campaign, and has invited politicians to attend their gathering this week at the school’s playground to come up with a plan to save their school.
“We’re getting together to celebrate our school and to write letters or draw pictures to show why the school needs to remain open,” said Wood. “We are part of a really strong community, and our school and the park are the hub of that community.”
Wood has two sons, one starting Grade 2 next week at the annex and another who is three years old.
All of the schools on the closure list are on the city’s east side, except Hudson elementary and Kerrisdale annex, but Bacchus says that’s because there is a higher concentration of schools there.
The possible closures come at a time when several senior staff have jumped ship from the VSB. Four of six associate superintendents have either quit or retired, and the assistant secretary-treasurer who was in charge of facilities, Mark Dale, left to take up a position at the B.C. Institute of Technology. Associate superintendents Sonia Hutson, Gary Little, Lynn Green and Laurie Anderson have either quit or retired in recent months. Superintendent Steve Cardwell has been with the board only since January 2010.
Two of the associate superintendent positions have been filled, but the other two and the assistant secretary-treasurer position remain vacant, and may be reorganized as part of the district’s cost-cutting measures.
Bacchus said more information about the closure process is expected to be posted on the VSB website within the next two weeks. Senior managers, meanwhile, are preparing an in-depth report for trustees recommending which schools from the list should proceed to the next stage of the closure process, which will include public hearings later in the fall.
Bacchus wouldn’t speculate about how many schools would ultimately be closed, if any.
In deciding which schools to close, trustees will consider enrolments, proximity to other schools, possible alternative uses and the age of the buildings.
While other districts have closed schools in recent years, Vancouver hasn’t closed a school since it shut Shannon Park elementary in 2003.
In 2008, Garibaldi annex, which was slated for closure, was given a second chance to increase its enrolment with a new program that’s a hybrid of home learning and traditional education. That decision is up for review this year.
Also in 2008, intense parent lobbying saved Queen Elizabeth annex from being closed after the district proposed selling the annex to pay for new schools.
When schools are closed, the district needs permission from the Minister of Education to sell the lands, a practice that the government usually discourages, Bacchus said. However, closed schools can be leased for other purposes. For example, the district leases out a former annex, Shannon Park, which was closed in 2003, to a Jewish school.
A report earlier this year noted the district could save $200,000 a year by closing an annex, $400,000 for an elementary school and $1.4 million for a secondary school.
tsherlock@vancouversun.com
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