A decision to move Grade 7 and 8 students to Listowel’s high school this September has been delayed for another month as public school board trustees mull over a new, less contentious option to ease enrollment pressures north of Stratford.
Avon Maitland District school board superintendent Cheri Carter and director of education Lisa Walsh presented the new option to trustees at a meeting Tuesday.
If approved, the latest proposal would keep Grade 7 and 8 students at North Perth Westfield for a few more years while less invasive boundary adjustments between that school and two others – Listowel Eastdale and Elma Township – move forward as originally planned.
The new proposal, a modified version of the recommendation school board staff provided to trustees in Aprilacknowledges parents who have voiced concerns about the space-saving plan to move North Perth Westfield students to their local high school two years early.
“I think everybody’s just recognizing that the last couple years have been very difficult and to make yet another change for kids right now is a challenge,” Carter said.
The compromise, however, also features a number of drawbacks.
Not moving North Perth Westfield’s Grade 7s and 8s this September means the school will need six to seven new portables to accommodate its growing student population over the next five years, according to the board report. Since Ontario does not allow school boards to use provincial funds to buy portables, the new units would need to be purchased using operating funds or reserves at an estimated cost of about $180,000 each.
Cost is “not a driving factor,” Carter said, but the modified plan is also a much shorter term solution to the board’s capacity woes in Listowel.
The new portables would push the school’s population to more than 800 students—even larger than many of Avon Maitland’s secondary schools—and require the board to launch another boundary review in four to six years. Placing Grade 7 and 8 students at Listowel District secondary school this September, meanwhile, will better address another urgent capacity issue at Listowel Eastdale and is estimated to create enough spaces to buy the school board another eight years of wiggle room, the report said.
Listowel District secondary school wouldn’t be the first in the region to accommodate students from Grades 7 to 12. There are already five others in Wingham, St. Marys, Goderich, Exeter, and Mitchell.
Carter said staff prefer the longer term option, but pointed out that “there’s no permanent fix here without some capital money from the government.”
After requesting that staff crunch the numbers on a shorter-term option earlier this month, trustees voted unanimously on Tuesday to defer their final decision to June 28.
“I was pleased to have a modified recommendation presented to us, as we have had many responses from the community indicating they were not agreeable to the (Grade 7s and 8s) being moved,” North Perth trustee and acting board chair Nancy Rothwell said via email on Wednesday. “The decision to defer gives the trustees more time to review the new report and information on the shorter term option.”
Multiple North Perth public schools are struggling to accommodate students as the region’s population continues to grow. Listowel Eastdale, Mornington Central and North Perth Westfield are all over capacity. At the most crowded of the three, Listowel Eastdale, where 351 students are learning in a space meant for 297, some classes are taking place in the school’s library or computer lab, a recent board report indicated.
The Avon Maitland board established a volunteer North Perth boundary review committee shortly after launching the review process at the end of October. Included in the review were the three Listowel schools, along with Elma Township public school, Mornington Central public school, Milverton public school and North Woods elementary school.
The committee’s progress, as well as more information about how to submit questions and comments, can be found on the school board’s website.