By Jeremy Chenier, Sean Condon and Olivier Bouffard
With the chanting of dozens of students ringing in their ears, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board trustees were confronted late last week by angry parents who denounced a recommendation to close 10 schools, including Centretown’s McNabb Park public school.
“We believe the entire school consolidation process is flawed,” Glen Boustead, representing the McNabb school council, told the board. “It would be short-sighted to lose such an exceptional facility as McNabb Park public school.”
Earlier in the evening, about 100 school-age children and angry parents, paraded through the boardroom lobby, carrying signs and chanting, “Save our school.”
McNabb is among the 10 schools flagged for closure next September in response to Ministry of Education guidelines designed to eliminate excess space. The school board must get rid of 10,700 pupil places by September 2000 and is expected to announce another 15 school closures before then.
Annie Deutsch, McNabb school council chair, said in an earlier interview there are many reasons to keep the school open — excellent playground facilities, the attached McNabb community centre that includes an indoor ice rink and a large gymnasium.
“There’s everything for a child in the downtown core where there are so few parks . . . to play in.”
Deutsch said the attached community centre makes the school an unreasonable choice for closure because the board will have to keep the building open even if the school closes.
Trustee Albert Chambers opposed the planning-staff recommendations. He said the board should close all the schools it needs to at once and failing to do so sends the message some communities are less important than others.
On Nov. 13, in an announcement that allowed a sigh of relief across the province, Premier Mike Harris gave everyone an extra year to decide which schools to shut down. But the board staff elected to go ahead with its previous school-closing schedule.
The staff defends its recommendations. According to Rose-Marie Batley, the superintendent responsible for the report, the decision to close schools in two phases was made to ease the process. “At least by identifying 10 schools now, instead of 20 or 25, we can deal with those 10 in a more caring and compassionate way.”
The recommended school closings were designed so students would only be moved once.
“We wanted to say to the parents and kids, ‘we’re moving you and you won’t have to move again,’ ” said Batley.
The Centretown Community Working Group, a group of parents representing Centretown schools formed to provide the board with closure options, also said the recommendations are flawed.
Colleen Leighton, a working group spokesperson, said the group was “appalled” with the options presented to the board.
At a Dec. 1 school board meeting, Leighton said there were many difficulties with the ministry’s process for selecting which schools to close.
“The planning staff’s analysis was based on flawed data and was largely insensitive to the impact of closures on educational programs, on other schools, other boards and . . . on neighbourhoods,” she said. “We believe the board can and should reject the staff recommendations.”
Leighton said the school board should petition the ministry to require filling only 90 — rather than the current 100 per cent — of pupil places, appeal to the Ontario government to change the formula used to calculate the pupil places in the schools, and do an area review to look at demographics of the downtown core.
Time is short for those who want to change the staff’s suggestions. The board is scheduled to vote on the staff recommendations Dec. 21.