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Published - Oct 28th, 2009
By
It’s going to be interesting to see how the community reacts to the “preferred option” regarding local schools in the Avon Maitland District School Board, presented last week by board staff at an information meeting at Exeter Public.
As reported, as the school board deals with declining enrolment, empty pupil spaces and struggles with funding, the board decided in September to study five local schools with the possibility that one or more of them may close — Exeter Public, Usborne Central, Stephen Central, Zurich Public and Hensall Public.
An accommodation review committee (ARC) has now been formed to deal with the issue and make recommendations to trustees this winter; trustees will then decide the fate of the five schools sometime in late May or early June.
Board staff’s preferred option — which education superintendent Mike Ash made sure to describe as “a starting point for discussion” and “not engraved in stone” — may have surprised some in the relatively small crowd at last week’s meeting. Staff suggested an option that would see all Grade 7/8 students going to South Huron District High School starting in 2012/13; closing Usborne and moving the Kindergarten to Grade 6 students to Exeter Public; and closing either Zurich Public and moving the Kindergarten to Grade 6 students to Hensall and Stephen, or closing Hensall Public and moving the special education students to Exeter Public and dividing the remaining Kindergarten to Grade 6 students between Exeter and Zurich.
The suggestion of closing Usborne was not a surprise — the school was studied for potential closure last year and was saved that fate when trustees decided to study the region as a whole this year rather than look at one school. That much of the crowd at last week’s meeting were the same people who attended last year’s Usborne meetings seemed to indicate that Usborne parents expected to have to fight for their school again this year.
But the suggestion of closing another school — Zurich or Hensall — was surprising, and time will tell how those affected communities will react. The board has a number of points to consider: will closing Zurich Public result in many students leaving the public system and moving across town to the Catholic school, St. Boniface? What impact would closing Hensall Public have on that community? Closing a school is not something that can be done lightly; there are many variables to consider, and that’s now the job of the ARC, board staff and the board trustees. As stated above, it’s the trustees who will make the ultimate decision about what happens to these schools.
The ARC will have at least four public meetings to deal with the school review, and they will rotate among the schools. The next meeting just happens to be at Zurich Public on Nov. 5 at 7 p.m. We’re tempted to ask for more people to attend that meeting than attended last week’s, but given the stakes, that probably won’t be a problem.
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