A committee of volunteers helping the Stratford area’s public school board decide how to ease enrollment pressures in North Perth is reaching out to the community for feedback as they get closer to making their final recommendations.
A committee of volunteers helping the Stratford area’s public school board decide how to ease enrollment pressures in North Perth is reaching out to the community for feedback as they get closer to making their final recommendations.
After forming nearly four months ago, the North Perth Boundary Review Committee has recently been working with the Avon Maitland District school board and a third party consultant on a strategy to free up much-needed classroom space in Listowel and the surrounding region.
The group’s latest report landed on the school board’s website Monday, along with a survey for area parents interested in providing feedback on the options now under consideration.
One option the group is considering is shuffling Grade 7 and 8 students from North Perth Westfield to Listowel District secondary school. That plan could also include boundary adjustments that would affect those schools as well as Listowel Eastdale and Elma Township, according to the report.
Another option would feed Grade 6 students from Listowel Eastdale into Elma Township for Grades 7 and 8, a plan that could also include boundary adjustments between Listowel Eastdale and North Perth Westfield.
Board superintendent Cheri Carter said Wednesday it is likely one of those options will be in front of board trustees at their meeting April 26. The survey open to families connected to one of the seven schools included in the boundary review process will be up until April 3 .
“If the community is clear that they prefer one over the other, we would like to be able to put that forward,” Carter said. “However, if the community comes back and says they don’t want to do either, we might be a bit restricted there. We have to do something.”
A pandemic-era trend encouraging young families from urban centers like Kitchener-Waterloo and the Greater Toronto Area to seek cost-of-living savings in nearby rural communities seems to be putting pressure on three North Perth area schools in particular. Listowel Eastdale public school, Mornington Central public school and North Perth Westfield elementary school are all over capacity.
The board is currently managing by using portable classrooms. At the most crowded of the three, Listowel Eastdale, where 351 students are learning in a space meant for 297, according to a recent board report, some classes are taking place in the school’s library or computer lab.
Some of the overcrowding was addressed by the province in January when the government announced a $4.3 million addition for Listowel Eastdale expected to create 98 new student spaces and 49 new childcare spaces in North Perth. Another $1.1 million earmarked for the region will be used to expand Milverton public school in Perth East to create 39 new childcare spaces, the government said.
Those announcements have been folded into the boundary review process, but more needs to be done to address enrollment pressures the board is facing, Carter said.
Also on the board’s radar is how the boundary review decision will will impact “border crossing” students who currently have permission to attend schools outside of the districts where they live. Both options the committee is considering assume those students will return to their home schools and not everyone on the boundary review committee is in favor of the board approving border crossing requests in the future, the report said.
“One of the things we’ve asked for some help with … is what the transition plan looks like,” Carter said.