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