SERV ICE AND MORE TAINM ENT KIDS’ STUFF PING RECRE ATION ENTER RESTA URAN TS SHOP TRAIL: BAR MO ON THE NANAI the city’s official dessert? What’s the best way to eat
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Mandate approved Downtown BIA continues to market area. PAGE 19 Coastal Living People adjust to regular watering restrictions. PAGE 27 Thorpe report Athletes excel at annual school track and field meet. PAGE 3
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SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 2013
VOL. 25, NO. 26
NANAIMO
Hope and anger greet decision to close schools
I
MORE THAN 200 people attended board meeting Wednesday. BY JENN M C GARRIGLE THE NEWS BULLETIN
CHRIS BUSH/THE NEWS BULLETIN
Small gesture, big leap
Robert Assaf is deemed a graduate of Dover Bay Secondary School with a flip of his mortarboard tassel by Robyn Gray, school principal, Thursday. Dover Bay kicked off this year’s series of Nanaimo high school graduation ceremonies when more than 240 students received their diplomas and parting words of encouragement from school staff members. For more photos, please visit www.nanaimobulletin.com.
Nanaimo school trustees voted to close five school sites, turn a secondary school into an elementary school and extend consultations on two more schools proposed for closure at Wednesday’s board meeting. Almost 200 parents, students and district employees packed into Nanaimo District Secondary School’s gymnasium to hear trustees debate the proposed 10-year facilities plan, which calls for major changes, including school closures, rebuilding facilities and adding enrichment programs. Dave Hutchinson, superintendent of schools, told the crowd the district’s fiscal challenges have meant trustees have been cutting and slashing budgets for a decade, 40 per cent of school facilities are beyond their useful life and while Nanaimo and Ladysmith populations have increased by 17,000 since 2001, district enrolment has decreased by more than 3,500 students in that same time frame. “We have definitely spread ourselves too thin over too many facilities and you can actually see the impact of that on student learning,” he said. “We have to focus on significant structural
changes so we can manage the budget challenges.” In the south end, trustees voted to close South Wellington this year, Cedar Secondary at the end of next year and Woodbank Primary and North Cedar Intermediate in June 2015, reopening the Cedar Secondary building as an elementary school in the 2015-16 school year. Secondary students in Cedar can attend either John Barsby or Ladysmith Secondary. The decision to close South Wellington was met with shouts of dismay from emotional parents and community members, some of whom walked out of the meeting as soon as trustees passed the bylaw. The school board also decided to close the buildings that house the junior and senior learning alternatives programs, moving both programs to NDSS with the majority of junior learning alternatives students accommodated at their catchment schools. Staff proposed a number of changes to the plan that were accepted by trustees, including extending school closure consultation periods for North Oyster and Davis Road elementary schools until December to consider alternatives; reconfiguring Ladysmith Secondary School as a Grade 7-12 school instead of adding Grades 6 and 7 to the school; and postponing the relocation of Woodlands Secondary students to NDSS until a new facility is built there. ◆ See ‘CONSULTATION’ /4
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