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Ottawa’s English public school board is getting $18.3 million from the provincial government to help surviving schools on the west side of the city absorb others the board is being forced to close, Education Minister Mitzie Hunter announced Monday.
She pledged the money in the sweltering library of Agincourt Road Public School near Baseline and Merivale roads. The school is air conditioned but the ventilation struggled to keep up with the heat outside. Kids in classrooms sat under ceiling fans with the lights off.
“Every time Mitzie Hunter comes to Ottawa, she brings good news,” said Shirley Seward, the chair of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. She travels to Ottawa more than most education ministers Seward has known as a trustee.
This good news only comes because of the bad that has come before. Seward and the board handled that part.
The province cut a program that gave top-up funding to low-enrolment schools as part of a deficit-busting attack on empty space. Exactly a year ago, trustees got a report sketching out the first steps they’d have to take to deal with provincial pressure on the roughly 11,500 unused spaces they had in schools across the city: close some schools, consolidate programs in others, bus kids farther. The final decisions came late last winter, after two bruising “accommodation reviews.” Studies, meetings, draft reports, protests, votes, more meetings, more protests.
Seward said she’ll never run two reviews at the same time again, if she can help it. But more are on the way for other parts of the city. The next one is for Alta Vista; it was supposed to begin this spring but the board bumped it to September. Others will follow for Centretown, Stittsville, north Kanata and Orléans.
Trustees ended up closing six elementary schools in central-west Ottawa and Rideau High School in the east. Most are in their final weeks now.
Agincourt Road has about 570 students from kindergarten to Grade 5 and it will absorb another 230 kids in Grades 6 to 8 from J.H. Putman Public School nearby, after a multimillion-dollar addition makes room for them. (Agincourt Road is already over its built capacity of about 550, according to board figures from the beginning of this year.) That’ll take at least until after the next school year.
Ironically, even J.H. Putman is almost full, just about 30 students short of its capacity of 340. But the way the accommodation reviews shuffle programs around — English, different levels of French immersion, kindergarten, Grades 6 to 8, special education and so on — Putman will die and Agincourt lives.
In Ottawa, carving up school communities is painful but in smaller towns, the provincial command has sometimes meant closing the only high schools and has residents worrying that their communities will blow away. Unpleasant as all the moving-around is, we have it comparatively easy. Agincourt Road is less than a 15-minute walk from J.H. Putman.
Besides the addition to Agincourt Road, provincial money will also pay for renovations to Woodroffe Avenue, Pinecrest and Briargreen public schools and Bell High School, and additions to Sir Robert Borden and Merivale high schools. Gloucester High School is also getting renovation money to absorb students from Rideau High School.
The high schools are getting money mostly for gyms to accommodate younger students whose programs are being moved in from middle schools that are closing or restructuring.
“You can’t just convert a classroom to make (gym) space,” said trustee Donna Blackburn, miming throwing a ball around in the Agincourt Road library — itself just the size of a largeish classroom. Blackburn’s southern-Nepean zone includes Sir Robert Borden and Merivale. “This is very good news for my high schools.”
Certainly that’s the way Hunter wanted to portray it. “By building the best possible learning environments for our students, we are laying the groundwork for their future success,” she said. “These school infrastructure projects will support the well-being and achievement of students across the province for years to come.”
Students take pride in going to bustling schools with modern classrooms and equipment, she said. It’s good for morale and that’s good for learning. She boasted about the nearly $18 billion that Liberal governments have spent on school construction projects since taking power in 2003. More is coming, as part of the Liberals’ massive infrastructure program, so Hunter will have more good-news announcements to go around the province making before the provincial election that’s due in just under a year.
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
She pledged the money in the sweltering library of Agincourt Road Public School near Baseline and Merivale roads. The school is air conditioned but the ventilation struggled to keep up with the heat outside. Kids in classrooms sat under ceiling fans with the lights off.
“Every time Mitzie Hunter comes to Ottawa, she brings good news,” said Shirley Seward, the chair of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. She travels to Ottawa more than most education ministers Seward has known as a trustee.
This good news only comes because of the bad that has come before. Seward and the board handled that part.
The province cut a program that gave top-up funding to low-enrolment schools as part of a deficit-busting attack on empty space. Exactly a year ago, trustees got a report sketching out the first steps they’d have to take to deal with provincial pressure on the roughly 11,500 unused spaces they had in schools across the city: close some schools, consolidate programs in others, bus kids farther. The final decisions came late last winter, after two bruising “accommodation reviews.” Studies, meetings, draft reports, protests, votes, more meetings, more protests.
Seward said she’ll never run two reviews at the same time again, if she can help it. But more are on the way for other parts of the city. The next one is for Alta Vista; it was supposed to begin this spring but the board bumped it to September. Others will follow for Centretown, Stittsville, north Kanata and Orléans.
Trustees ended up closing six elementary schools in central-west Ottawa and Rideau High School in the east. Most are in their final weeks now.
Agincourt Road has about 570 students from kindergarten to Grade 5 and it will absorb another 230 kids in Grades 6 to 8 from J.H. Putman Public School nearby, after a multimillion-dollar addition makes room for them. (Agincourt Road is already over its built capacity of about 550, according to board figures from the beginning of this year.) That’ll take at least until after the next school year.
Ironically, even J.H. Putman is almost full, just about 30 students short of its capacity of 340. But the way the accommodation reviews shuffle programs around — English, different levels of French immersion, kindergarten, Grades 6 to 8, special education and so on — Putman will die and Agincourt lives.
In Ottawa, carving up school communities is painful but in smaller towns, the provincial command has sometimes meant closing the only high schools and has residents worrying that their communities will blow away. Unpleasant as all the moving-around is, we have it comparatively easy. Agincourt Road is less than a 15-minute walk from J.H. Putman.
Besides the addition to Agincourt Road, provincial money will also pay for renovations to Woodroffe Avenue, Pinecrest and Briargreen public schools and Bell High School, and additions to Sir Robert Borden and Merivale high schools. Gloucester High School is also getting renovation money to absorb students from Rideau High School.
The high schools are getting money mostly for gyms to accommodate younger students whose programs are being moved in from middle schools that are closing or restructuring.
“You can’t just convert a classroom to make (gym) space,” said trustee Donna Blackburn, miming throwing a ball around in the Agincourt Road library — itself just the size of a largeish classroom. Blackburn’s southern-Nepean zone includes Sir Robert Borden and Merivale. “This is very good news for my high schools.”
Certainly that’s the way Hunter wanted to portray it. “By building the best possible learning environments for our students, we are laying the groundwork for their future success,” she said. “These school infrastructure projects will support the well-being and achievement of students across the province for years to come.”
Students take pride in going to bustling schools with modern classrooms and equipment, she said. It’s good for morale and that’s good for learning. She boasted about the nearly $18 billion that Liberal governments have spent on school construction projects since taking power in 2003. More is coming, as part of the Liberals’ massive infrastructure program, so Hunter will have more good-news announcements to go around the province making before the provincial election that’s due in just under a year.
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
