Consolidation

The school board had a meeting with the Capilano, Gold Bar and Fulton Place community leagues on April 22 at the Capilano Community Hall. George Rice, our school board trustee, wasn’t there.

A couple of things came out at the meeting. The Edmonton Public School Board has a $33 million surplus. That’s no reason to mismanage funds, but it does mean they could add extra spaces in the outlying areas of the city without closures.

It was clear that the recommendation to the trustees must include consolidation. Adding alternative programs to the school is not reason enough to keep the schools open. The school board considers our area to have around 2,100 spaces, and believes we should have closer to 1,200. The presenters said if we saw one school closure in the neighbourhood they would be back in five or ten years to look at more consolidation. It looks like they want to close not one but two of the four schools.

The school board says Fulton has 480 spots, Gold Bar 340, and Capilano 405. Total enrolment between the three elementary schools is 486. If the intent is to keep elementary separate from junior high, they could only close one elementary school, which seems a certainty. But, if the school board wants to close 1,000 spaces, they will need to close Hardisty Junior High, which has 402 students and 878 spaces. The presenters talked about likely increases in capacity at Ottewell and Kenilworth when new schools in Millwoods open. This kind of talk seems to indicate they want to close not just one elementary school but Hardisty also. Closing Hardisty would be tragic since the every parent with a kid there says the school is doing amazing things, especially under the principal Al Lowrie. How can we lose that? We have schools providing an excellent education and community experience for our kids, but the school board looks strictly at the numbers. They will tell you that they want what’s best for the kids, but need to close the schools because they have too many spaces and that costs too much money. The biggest savings will come from staff reductions (the board saves $200,00 a year by closing a school) and the staff are what make our schools great.

Combined Community League Meeting for Capilano, Gold Bar, and Fulton Place

Representatives from Edmonton Public Schools' Planning Department will be meeting with the Community Leagues of Gold Bar, Capilano, and Fulton Place Schools. Information about the Greater Hardisty Area school review process and timelines will be shared.

The meeting is scheduled for 7:00 pm Wed April 22, 2009 at the Capilano Community League Hall. All interested stakeholders are welcome. For more information, call Bill 780.469.5744

Taken directly from:
http://www.capilano.info/content/view/333/81/

Results of the Ad Hoc Committee for School Closure and Sustainability Review

To read the recommendations that the school board received from two consulting firms, visit:
http://www.epsb.ca/board/april14_09/item06.pdf

The firms they hired are:

http://www.cambridgestrategies.com/
johnstonresearch (no site found)

Points of interest in the document are as follows:

Trustee George Rice recommends that "support for the smooth transition of students and staff
in the case of a school closure be enhanced," and "a process to monitor and record student success post transition be developed and implemented." It sounds as though school closures are viewed as inevitable in the Greater Hardisty Area.

Important Board Meeting 14 April

Last year the school board struck a sub committee to study the issue of school closures. That committee will report its findings at the April 14 board meeting. The meeting starts at 6:00, but the report isn’t scheduled until 7:30. Parent pressure is the surest way to get the board to listen. Come out to the board meeting and let your presence be felt.

Russ

Sustainability Review Revelations

On March 5, 2009, some of the planners from the school board held an information session on the greater Hardisty area sustainability review. The school board is hiring a consultant to recommend how to proceed. I’m not sure if the presenter let it slip or he misspoke, but he said one criterion for the review was consolidation. When pressed, he backed away from that statement. The key is, if the board lays out consolidation as a requirement of the report, that is exactly what they will get back. He did say the best interests of the students was the chief guiding principle.

I asked some questions on budget. The whole idea of school closure is to save money. The example most often used is that it is more expensive to maintain three elementary schools than two. I asked for some clarification here. Maintenance represents less than 10% of the budget for Capilano school, in other words, staffing costs represent more than 90% of the cost at the school. Closing a school will result in small capital savings. So I probed into that. The presenter then said that the target for staff costs is closer to 80%. This needs to be deconstructed. The maintenance costs for a school won’t change too much depending on student population. It is more a factor of the physical size of the facilities. Assuming that facility costs remain constant, the only way you get capital costs as a greater percentage is to lower staff costs. Closing a school, it seems to me, is about reducing staff costs. Fewer staff means a higher student to teacher ratio. This is not in the best interests of students, which is supposedly the chief guiding principle.

Russ

EPSB School Closure Survey

The Edmonton Public School Board is taking a survey on school closures. It’s password protected, and we don’t know how the sample was chosen, but it is worthwhile for all of us to have a say. A closed survey seems to suggest there is a desire to control the response. Transparency would be better. Russ emailed

Bev Esslinger (Bev.Esslinger@epsb.ca), the board chair, to ask her to send me a password and to extend the deadline (which is January 23). You can do the same. The link for the survey is here:

http://viawebsurvey.epsb.net/vws/Surveys_ai1.cfm?a=1002&b=4047

Capilano Parent Advisory Council

George Rice, the school board trustee for our area, will be attending the Capilano Parent Advisory Council meeting on 28 January 2009. Russ will attend and will take the opportunity to get an update from Mr. Rice on the review status. We’ll post the outcomes here after the 28^th. Stay tuned, and feel free to attend.


http://www.epsb.ca/trustees/gtrustee.shtml
George.Rice@epsb.ca