First phase of school utilization study presented to Tri-County board

By Tina Comeau

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

The Tri-County Regional School Board is accepting input on a school utilization report presented to it last Tuesday.

It will hold a special board meeting on Tuesday, March 16 to make decisions pertaining to items contained in the report.

In particular, the school board has to decide by April 1 whether to initiate the year-long school review process on some schools that may come up for consideration of closure. In Yarmouth County no schools fall under that umbrella, although this is just phase one of the school utilization study.

The schools the board is being asked to look at are Cape Sable Island and Clarks Harbour in Shelburne County, where the plan is to amalgamate the two elementary schools into one, which at this point has been identified as a renovated Clarks Harbour School. In Digby County, the board is being asked to consider whether to initiate a school review process for Westport School, which only has 11 students in it. “I can only say any school that has 11 children in it has got to be considered for review when there is no evidence enrollment will increase,” said Jim Gunn, a former school board superintendent and the consultant hired by the board to examine school utilization.

Gunn stressed during the presentation of his report that a school review does not automatically equal a school closure. “I am not recommending schools to be closed and you don’t need to either,” he told the board. “That’s not a question you need to ask, do I think this school should be closed? “You only need to ask . . . should these schools be identified to go through the process to be considered. You don’t have to decide about closing the school until the year-long process is complete.”

Meanwhile, the report outlines something that doesn’t come as a surprise. Like it is across the province, student enrollment is declining here in the Tri-County board. In the year 2009-10, student enrollment is 7,023. By the year 2014-15, it is anticipated to be 5,857. Twenty years from now the projection is enrollment will only be 4,073. Gunn said enrollment figures 20 years from now might not be an immediate concern now, but, he noted, “The schools that you build in the next 10 years will still be relatively new in 20 years.”

The report presented to the board at its Feb. 2 meeting contains conclusions on how early French immersion should be handled. And as part of that discussion, Gunn noted that Meadowfields and Maple Grove are at a steady and/or growing enrollment so the board has to make decisions that do not lead overcrowding at these schools.

In conclusions Gunn includes in his report, he states that a decision to house Grade 7, 8 and 9 early immersion at Maple Grove, and not at a newly configured P-8 school in Yarmouth, would most likely lead to overcrowding. (The P-8 school he speaks of is a school that would house students from Central, South Centennial and Yarmouth Junior High after a new 9-12 high school is built in Yarmouth.)

The early immersion program should remain at Yarmouth Junior High for all immersion students from Meadowfields, Yarmouth Central and South Centennial he concludes in the report. “The level of interest in immersion of the families of Yarmouth Central is one of the highest in the system,” Gunn said. “I think we can be confident that when we put the South Centennial students in the new P-8 renovated school, that there would be more of them enrolling in French immersion. That’s a reason to think the enrollment in French immersion could go up.”

Gunn doesn’t rule out the possibility, however, that in the future the board may need an early immersion program at both Maple Grove and Yarmouth Junior High. Just not yet, he suggests.

Gunn’s review of school utilization is not yet complete. He’s aiming to present the school board with phase two of his study at the board’s March 2 meeting. “Some further observations may be made about some longer-term possible options for the configurations of the new high school in Yarmouth, Maple Grove Education Centre, Meadowfields Community School and Plymouth School. The longer term future of Arcadia Consolidated School will be considered in this analysis,” Gunn’s report reads.

He does say that no matter what the next phase of his report concludes, no other schools will be identified to be brought through the school review process after April 1 of this year. The earliest such a scenario could present itself is in April 2011, and again, the review process after that takes one year to complete before any final decisions are made.

The report into the first phase of Gunn’s school utilization report has been distributed to schools and is posted on the school board’s website.