Parents frustrated with new catchment areas

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This article was published 27/11/2019 (2291 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Bridgwater Forest parents are frustrated their families won’t be in the catchment area for a grade school slated to open across the street from their neighbourhood. Instead, it will be open to students who don’t live in the area yet. 

On Wednesday night, the Pembina Trails School Division provided dozens of area residents with an update on a K-8 school and high school that are expected to open in Waverley West in 2022. The division presented the school catchment areas for the first time.

“We back-on to where the school’s going to be built and we’re going to watch it 100 yards away from our house and we’re not going to be able to go to it. We’re very frustrated,” said Ryan McGregor, a father of a five-year-old and seven-year-old whose family lives in Bridgwater Forest.

Students from all the surrounding areas will be able to attend the new high school, but the K-8 school will be reserved for residents in “Area B,” the neighbourhood where the schools will be built — and which developer Qualico has yet to name.

“When it opens, there will be some empty seats saved for the students yet to come,” Elaine Egan, assistant superintendent for human resources at the division told an audience at Acadia Junior High School.

The new K-8 school will also be a “placeholder catchment school” for Prairie Pointe and Bridgwater Lakes, which will eventually get their own schools, Egan said. 

She said the division came up with catchment areas by examining the residential development in South Pointe and its newly-built school’s high demand for seats. Area B, she said, is expected to have even more residential development and students. 

Bridgwater Forest residents say the decision will continue to ensure the neighbourhood lacks a sense of community since students will continue to attend different schools.

William Cheung said kids within a four block radius go to as many as 10 different schools. He said the catchment schools have large classroom sizes due to all the demand for schools in the area, which is why he sent his daughter to Linden Christian School. Although, he said she might attend the high school nearby when it opens because it will offer a vocational program.

The K-8 school will have a capacity for 800 students. The high school will be built to hold 1,000, but could expand by 200.

Division superintendent Ted Fransen said he understands the dissappointment but the division has a requirement to ensure it’s using all of its space and if Bridgwater Forest residents left their catchment schools, there would be empty seats.

Coun. Janice Lukes (Waverley West) said she could imagine the frustration the Bridgwater Forest residents are feeling “because they’re literally across the street from the school.” She added she didn’t have any input on the matter.

After the meeting, other residents expressed frustration that the board didn’t address the status of the child care facility expected to open in the neighbourhood.

“They should’ve mentioned it because if they’re planning a K-8 school in the community, that’s where growing families are, where working parents are,” said Abhishek Anand, a Richmond West resident who attended the meeting with his seven-year-old son.

Fransen said the division serves as a landlord for such facilities, but it’s unclear where the facility will be. “There will be a daycare on this campus,” he said, pointing to the blueprint, which illustrates both the schools, as well as a recreational centre slated to be built on adjacent city property.

Provincial funding for new schools or major renovations in schools must also include support for an early learning or child care facility in that school or on adjacent school property, according to the Public Schools Act.

Wherever it ends up, the child-care facility will be a welcome addition to a community where the closest facility currently has more than 1,200 names on its waitlist.

Hundreds of guardians are actively looking for child care spaces at South Pointe School – which only has 135 spaces for children ranging from four months to 12 years, according to the province’s Online Child Care Registry.

““It does pinch families a lot. We hear a lot of desperation in their voices when we tell them ‘We can’t tell you when you’re going to spot or if you are going to get a spot,” said Karen Ohlson, executive director of K.I.D.S. Inc., which runs programming at South Pointe School.

Only 53 of the 135 filled spots are available to school-aged children, yet the South Winnipeg school has more than 900 kids registered.

Ohlson said K.I.D.S turned down the opportunity to run the new facility when approached by the school board. “We’re maxed out at three centres,” she said, adding that recruitment and retention are both challenges when it comes to the child care industry.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie