Tories have no plan to lift NDP moratorium on school closures

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This article was published 28/10/2017 (2959 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Archwood School was a lonely little building on Winnipeg’s Archibald Street with one student for every five desks when it was slated for closure in 2008.

It has since doubled its enrolment because of a housing development and no one is talking about closing it down — even if Tory Education Minister Ian Wishart lifts the moratorium on school closures the former NDP government imposed more than nine years ago.

“No. The last request we received was for Chapman School in Pembina Trails (School Division), where the community supported closure of the building and transferring students to Royal School,” Wishart said this week. “Any requests would need to be justified according to the requirements of existing legislation.”

There were 13 schools on the chopping block when then-NDP education minister Peter Bjornson ambushed the Manitoba public education system in 2008, announcing an immediate moratorium on closures.

Since then, 11 of those schools are still open, though only Archwood has bounced back substantially.

Pembina Trails School Division closed Chapman School a couple of years ago after it was literally left empty — the remaining parents had asked to move their children to the nearby, bigger Royal. Kenton School similarly closed in Park West S.D.

Disbrowe School in Frontier S.D. is technically open this year, though it has no children enrolled. It had six in 2008. Disbrowe is on a remote island and is the only option for any children in the area, said the province.

Four of the schools slated to close nearly a decade ago were in Louis Riel S.D.: Archwood, Marion, École Henri-Bergeron, and Dr. D.W. Penner.

Penner is even smaller these days, but superintendent Duane Brothers said the division no longer wants to close any schools.

It’s been moving grades and students around schools to accommodate the enormous growth in French immersion in the division. (The latest enrolment numbers will be released in February, when the province posts its annual report.)

Penner has dropped to 126 from 151 students, Marion has grown to 140 from 132, and Bergeron is up to 183 from 177. Archwood once had 105 students, but it’s now at 202.

“We believe in community schools and our student population is growing. If anything, we will continue to review reorganization rather than school closures,” Brothers said.

Wishart will launch a comprehensive review of the $2.4-billion public school system a year from now, which would include looking at criteria for closing schools. But the minister said he prefers school divisions find ways to use those buildings as schools.

“Manitoba is a growing province and most divisions have seen increases in enrolment. We are focused on ensuring school divisions can make the best use of existing space,” he said.

St. James-Assiniboia S.D. was going to close either Hedges or Ness middle school programs a decade ago. Now, they’re part of a division-wide reorganization.

Hedges had 209 students when it was considered for closure — it now has 352.

Ness had 242. Now, two years into the three-year reorganization, with students in only two of three grades thus far, it has 127 students in Grade 6, 104 in Grade 7, and adds Grade 8 next fall, when it’s projected to reach 360.

The six middle schools would range between 250 and 368 students next year.

Prior to the NDP legislation, River East Transcona S.D. wanted to close Sherwood (up to 112 from 89, but still among Winnipeg’s smallest schools) and Westview, which has grown to 192 students from 178.

“The RETSD board of trustees has had no discussions regarding school closures for several years, and there are no plans to start the discussion in our division at this time. We have not received any information or a notification from the province regarding the moratorium on closing schools,” superintendent Kelly Barkman said through an aide.

In Lakeshore School Division, both early-years schools in Ashern and Fisher Branch were slated to close and the much-larger collegiates were to be renovated and expanded to become kindergarten to Grade 12 buildings. That never happened.

Ashern’s early years school has shrunk to 60 students from 95; while Fisher Branch at 103, up from 85.

Similar situations exist in small Manitoba communities such as Birtle, Riverton, Treherne, Minitonas and Rossburn, with two small-to-smallish schools in those towns. And a few neighbouring communities each have a school of different grades serving both towns, such as Crystal City and Pilot Mound.

Rural Manitoba is awash with some very small schools, such as Domain School in Red River Valley S.D., which has 19 children in kindergarten to Grade 8. It is 40 kilometres from downtown Winnipeg and relatively close to the communities of Sanford and La Salle.

Closing small schools over the objections of local parents would be risky politically. Children would have to be put on school buses daily — although many of them are already taking a bus — and a community’s central point would be lost.

Wishart said the Progressive Conservative government led by Premier Brian Pallister has found no evidence the former NDP government studied the hidden costs of what losing a school means to a community, or how much additional costs such as busing there would be in sending children to a neighbouring community.

Meanwhile, Chapman was not the only school to close in recent years. Pine Dock School in Frontier, Graysville in Prairie Rose, and Reynolds Community School in Sunrise S.D. were shuttered when parents effectively voted with their feet and moved the children to larger schools in other communities.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca