It’s all in the numbers; School District ponders a difficult decision.

The possible closing of one or more schools on the east side of the city has the School District weighing the options as far as providing services for students and perhaps gaining more modern infrastructure down the line.

While no decision has been made regarding any school closures, the staff of the school district has put together a list of reasons why closing schools in the district may be beneficial in the long term.

Monday’s Daily News featured details of the thinking behind the issue and how it may affect the local community.

‘CLOSING A SCHOOL WILL HELP STUDENTS REACH SERVICES’
Difficult decision could mean more resources for kids
By James Vassallo
The Daily News
Monday, February 19, 2007
Pages one and three

Although the school board has not picked a date for the public consultation process to begin, district staff recently outlined why closing one school, or more, would be a good idea.

“Over the last ten years, things have changed, and the school district has done a lot of things to adjust to those changes, but we’ve always been doing what’s been defined as non-structural changes- we’ve had layoffs, we’ve gone to split classes and triple split classes, we’ve done a lot of things like that,’ said Dan Rodin, secretary-treasurer. “Enrollment has declined, the funding formula has changed which puts a lot more pressure on us – and that’s caused a lot of provinces to close schools.”

The reasons to follow suit are both economic and education-based. The Ministry of Education has identified seismic risk as being a major concern around the province. In School District 52, most of the schools, with the exception of Charles Hays and Roosevelt have been identified as having a structural problem if an earthquake hits the North Coast. While the province has said it is willing to fix schools with seismic problems, the province is encouraging districts with “over-capacity” to close some of their schools, rather than fix them all.

The benefit in the equation is that the Ministry will only then consider building a new school for the district.

As to the three schools that have been suggested as possible closure candidates – Conrad, Kanata and Seal Cove- seismic upgrades are expected to range from just over $400,000 to more than $1.6 to $2.6 million.

Savings would also be found to the tune of about $200,000 a year per close school because it would allow the reduction of a principal, custodian, secretary, noon hour supervisors and require less maintenance staff time.

“Unless there’s a significant influx of population – and the current graduation statistics continue and the number of students coming in at the kindergarten level remain at the same rate they have in the last two or three years then - we anticipate (the schools) will continue to experience declining enrollment,” said Brian Kanga, superintendent of schools.

“We will continue to have more capacity, even if the board decides to follow the consolidation process and close a school,” said Kangas.

According to Kangas, the downside of having an under-populated school is that they have only a very small amount of resource teacher time and a small amount of ELD or ESL teacher time, which means it falls to classroom teachers to do more, taking away from their primary role.

“The teachers who are trying to do those jobs have multiple tasks – they’re the classroom teacher, learning resource teacher and ESL teacher on the side and their time is really curtailed,” he said.

“Three grade splits are common and they will become more common, smaller number of kids in band, smaller number of kids for teams, smaller number of teachers to run extra-curriculars.”

By contrast, many of these issues wouldn’t be prevalent at a larger school.

You will likely have a full-time learning assistance teacher who will be there to meet more of the needs of more kids,” said Kangas. “More teachers, more staff will be willing to step up and take on the after-school activities (and) small cohorts of kids in the languages make it more difficult to offer a vibrant program.

“If we close a school, we will be able to provide additional supports that we may not be able to if we don’t have those funds. In my opinion, educational programs and services will be compromised if we continue with the status quo.”