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School Closure Issues
By: Judith Bishop
Trustee ward 1 and 2
Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board
02 February 2003: The Supervisor has approved a school "revitalisation"
plan. This involves building 4 new schools to be paid for out of
New Pupil Funding grants. Previously the Board has paid for new
schools from the sale of land and unwanted schools. To qualify for
New Pupil Funding, boards have to have elementary or secondary schools
at above full capacity, and this must be maintained for
the next 25 years. Student growth is in the suburbs, so
to continue to build the new schools needed there, schools elsewhere
will need to be closed. At the same time, student enrolment generally
is falling in Hamilton and across the Province, as families are
becoming smaller. Therefore, with even one school being built in
this way, further school closures will have to follow in the ensuing
24 years. Small neighborhood elementary schools, in both the rural
areas and the inner city, will be closed and students consolidated
into schools of 500-700 pupils.
The lower city and Dundas will be targets for closure of schools
in the next 25 years as that is where there are the least students.
The next phase of the Supervisor's plan calls for the holding of
school closure meetings in city west, city east, and Dundas to begin
in March this year. To reduce the number of elementary student spaces
in schools so that the 4 new schools can be paid for, 350 student
spaces have been identified to be removed from Ward 1 and 2, 600
spaces from wards 3 , 4 and 5, and 700 spaces from Dundas. The schools
are yet to be identified.
Will trustees, if returned to their positions, be able to turn back
these recommendations?
The process to build the first new school at Chappell East/Chappell
West with New Pupil Funding is already underway. An architect has
been hired and construction is slated to begin this year. To pay
for it, all empty elementary student spaces have to be removed.
The closures now of Seneca, Sherwood Heights, Peace Memorial, Hampton
Heights, Fernwood Park, Thornbrae, Burkholder, Lynden, Sheffield,
Lloyd George, Parkwood, Maple Lane and Grange ( or other schools
of like combined student capacity) are inevitable. The Supervisor
has locked the Board into that part of the plan. Trustees might
decide not to build some of the other new schools, although they
are needed, and lobby the government of the day for improvements
in the way new schools are funded.
How can Community schools be saved? Are there alternatives to closing
schools?
If enrolment could be increased, then less schools would have to
close. There are ways in which more students could be encouraged
to attend HWDSB schools. Here are a few suggestions:
- There needs to be better marketing of HWDSB schools and programs
by the Board, an area that trustees feel is lacking. A better
communications approach has long been on the agenda of trustees.
- Schools could make sure that their communities know what a good
job their local school is doing through their web sites, school
council and home and school initiatives, open houses and local
publicity.
- Another strategy to increase enrolment is providing more programs
of choice for parents. Parents who might not otherwise consider
public schools can be encouraged to register their children because
there are alternative programs. Strathcona school would almost
certainly be looking at closure if the SAGE program had not been
placed in its school. There are only about 70 children from the
local neighborhood. The rest come to the SAGE program, and about
50 of these children were previously being home schooled, at private
school, or a catholic school. This is how the Edmonton school
Board has filled its schools. When I visited, I was told that
many schools were otherwise going to close.
- There could be better links with McMaster when it recruits new
staff and graduate students with families, so that their children
attend HWDSB schools.
These are solutions that trustees, when back in their old positions,
would be interested in working with school councils and home and
school associations and the community, to safeguard the community
school.
Judith Bishop
Trustee ward 1 and 2
Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board
web page: www.hwdsb.on.ca/jbishop
tel: 905 528 7740
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