The Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues is urging both Edmonton school boards to adopt a new strategy to deal with surplus place in public schools. LETTER SENT TO MINISTER HANCOCK MARCH 29 - download pdf
The strategy is quite simple. It calls for the boards to work with partners, such as community leagues, to find productive uses for surplus space – as opposed to shutting down the school.
“We need to work on the space issue before the school is identified for closure,” noted EFCL president David Gibbens. “Once the school is on the chopping block it is very hard to get partners to come to the table.”
In the next six weeks the Edmonton Public School Board will review recommendations by its staff to close five Edmonton schools - McCauley, Eastwood, Parkdale, Capilano and Fulton Place – along with the elementary program at Spruce Avenue.
The federation is concerned that this would damage community building efforts in these neighborhoods for decades to come.
“It’s ironic to see the City of Edmonton pouring millions of dollars into revitalizing 118 Avenue and providing social programs for the adjacent communities,” Gibbens observed. “Meanwhile the school board is closing the shutters on two of the biggest neighborhood building blocks – namely the schools in Eastwood and Parkdale.
At a board meeting last week, federation directors observed that the public school board seems intent to spend significant amounts of money promoting specialized school programs, such as enhanced academic, language or sports programs. However, no effort is made to promote the local neighborhood school, where children could make friends, feel good about their neighborhood and avoid wasting time and money on long bus trips each day.
“This is the kind of thing we want to address with our ‘Living Local’ campaign,” Gibbens noted. We would like to see everyone do more things close to home.”
Gibbens said his organization is quite cognizant of the financial challenges faced by the two public school boards and believes there is an obligation for both the city and provincial government to help address this situation.
The federation has requested a meeting with Edmonton government MLAs and will be contacting Edmonton City Council as well.
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