Maple Ridge Times July 2 2010 by Glacier Community Publishing

Maple Ridge & Pitt Meadows Times

Friday, July 2, 2010

Upfront

Attention Campers!

Pages 16 & 17

Closure students face life at new schools by Maria Rantanen mrantanen@mrtimes.com

wo more schools closed this week in the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows school district as the enrolment drops in the centre of the school district while other areas suffer from overcrowded schools. Riverside and Mount Crescent elementary schools officially closed their doors to elementary students on June 30, but both will be used by the school district for other purposes. In fall, 2007, three schools were named for closure - Mount Crescent, Riverside and Webster’s Corners. At that point, no schools were closed - the emphasis at the time of that decision was that no schools would be closed “at that time” and the board of education wanted more information before making a decision. A year ago in the spring, the board of education brought the subject back on the table and went through another round of consultation with the public considering the closure of only Mount Crescent and Riverside. This time the hard decision was made and the axe fell on Dec. 9 when the board of education decided to close the two schools. Outgoing Riverside principal Tanya Dailey has tried to keep the school running business as usual right to the end. “We’ve tried to keep this status quo in recognition that this is hard for some kids,” Dailey said. “We owe the absolute best for these kids.” Dailey said the pictures will stay in the hallways and former students will be welcome to come back to visit. In recent years, the school district has closed three other schools: Meadowlands Elementary, Maple Ridge Primary and Thornhill Elementary, but these building were sold. Meadowlands become Greybrook Academy, and Maple Ridge Primary became the Colleen Findlay Place. Since then the ministry has put stricter guidelines in place around selling off closed schools, and the two schools in Maple Ridge will be retained for other district purposes. Riverside Elementary is going to turn into Riverside Centre which will house international education, adult education and Ridge Meadows College. Topia, a Korean group, will stay at the school at least for the time being. At Mount Crescent, because it is next door to Maple Ridge Secondary, many of the rooms

will be used for high school instruction allowing for the removal of 21 of the 23 portables from MRSS. Half the students from Riverside Elementary are going to Hammond Elementary this fall and half to Maple Ridge Elementary. The students have had visits to the two schools and were invited to their “fun day,” Dailey said. Riverside had only 99 students this year while it could accommodate 471 students - it was at 21 per cent capacity. Riverside’s population has dropped dramatically over the years, partly because of the lack of children in the area but also partly because it was named for closure in 2007 and partly because of the cancellation of its French immersion program. The dropping population made the viability of the school uncertain, but after the decision was made last December that the school would close and the uncertainty was over, the mood changed to “let’s move on,” Dailey said. The school district has done a good job listening to the concerns of all involved, and both a parent transition committee and a staff transition committee were formed, she added. “(The staff) are sad - this their school, we are a community,” Dailey said. The library books and other resources will be dispersed in the school district as needed, Dailey said, but each student was also allowed to choose a book to take along to his or her new school. School enrolment is expected to keep dropping in SD42 until 2018. In the 2009/10 school year, 981 students entered kindergarten in Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows schools, but with 1,551 students graduating, there are fewer kids entering than leaving the system. The school district has been informally split into three sections: west (Pitt Meadows), centre and east. Some of the schools in the east are over capacity, for example, Albion Elementary is at 128 per cent and Alexander Robinson is at 107 per cent capacity. Only Blue Mountain and Webster’s Corners are low in enrolment - they are about 50 per cent full. The school district made a lot of adjustments to its catchment boundaries this year in order to direct some students away from the overcrowded schools into ones with space. The Ministry of Education had made it clear to the school district that it wouldn’t allow for more schools to be built in the district until some of the

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Troy Landreville/ TIMES Saying goodbye to their old school are, clockwise from bottom left, Destiny Christensen (Grade 2), Caleb Wong (Grade 1), Dayton Peat (Grade 2), and Rachel Derochie (Grade 1). The wooden Gator mascot they surrounded has taken a beating through the years. It has been punched, kicked, torn, and “gator-napped.” (Left) Mt. Crescent student Dryden with his portrait. extra space was got rid of, in other words, schools needed to close before they’d consider giving the capital funds to build a new school in the east. Secretary-treasurer Wayne Jefferson has rejigged the fiveyear capital plan putting a new school in Albion South at the top of the wish list. (Last year an expansion to Samuel Robertson was at the number one priority as it opened five years ago with portables on site already.) The school district owns a seven-acre school site at 24137 104 Ave.. In the centre of the school district (this includes Fairview, Riverside, Hammond, Maple Ridge, Laity View, Glenwood, Alouette, Mount Crescent, Eric Langton, Harry Hooge, Yennadon and Golden Ears elementary schools), the entire school population is at 70 per cent capacity - there were 4,257 students enrolled at these schools while they could have accommodated 6,112 students. Glenwood, Mount Crescent, Alouette and Eric Langton elementary schools as a group

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- all within a little more than a kilometre radius - were at 60 per cent capacity, in other words, they had a combined student population of 1,060 students while they could have fit 717 more students into the four schools. This school year, the enrolment at the Mount Crescent was 166 but the Ministry of Education predictions showed it wouldn’t increase over the next 10 years and the predicted enrolment for 2020 was 178 students. It was at 41 per cent capacity this year but the school could have fit 401 students. During the last school closure process, the school and the rest of the district rallied to keep their doors open. They were spared in 2007, but not this time around. “The sadness was more after the announcement,” outgoing Mount Crescent principal Lisa Lawrance said. But once it was announced, the attitude changed to “we have to move on and we have a lot of work to do.”

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Of the students at Mount Crescent, about 100 are going to Glenwood Elementary as are several teachers and special education assistants. In the end, the process has resulted in a partial amalgamation of the two schools. Mount Crescent Elementary students made a time capsule - to be opened in 2030 - and compiled some photos from over the years. These along with this year’s yearbook were donated to the Maple Ridge Museum. Dave Rempel, currently a school board trustee and one trustee on the board when the decision came down to close the schools, was principal of Mount Crescent Elementary from 1989 to 1995. Rempel said he has many good memories from being at the helm of the school. As the principal, he organized the school into fine arts “families” whereby each “family,” composed of students from all grades, worked on their own specific project. “The fine arts is such an

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equalizer and stretcher of intelligence,” Rempel said. “And yet, it’s the first thing we cut in schools.” Sieglinde Stieda was teacherlibrarian at Mount Crescent from 1990 to 2003 and she decided to do a photography project with her family of students. Being next to Maple Ridge Secondary, the students were able to access the photo lab in the high school with the help of one of the high school teachers. But the “family” units in the school did more than teach children about fine arts - the older children took “ownership” of the younger students, Rempel said, and the discipline and vandalism problems they had at the school started to wane. Stieda said there was something special about Mount Crescent and a lot of it stemmed from the collaboration and camaraderie of teachers. After the charter of rights instilled the right for people with disabilities not to be discriminated against, there was a push for integration of students with disabilities into regular classrooms. Mount Crescent launched into a project called Kids for Kids that Stieda believes helped change attitudes about children with physical disabilities. Four students from Mount Crescent attended a public panel on the rights of children with handicaps hosted by the U.N. Association for Canada. This resulted in a video project called Kids for Kids. “I think it set the tone at Mount Crescent that being different is okay,” Stieda said. “The atmosphere that grew (was that) all the children are your responsibility.” Years later, Stieda is still in contact with some students - many who had learning difficulties and challenging backgrounds - and many have become successful adults. Last Friday was the last day of school for Mount Crescent Elementary after more than half a century of operation. Jan Unwin, superintendent of schools in SD42, said she is “so proud” to be working in the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows school district as she watched “an entire community come together and work to ensure that a very difficult situation turned into a very positive result for students.” “It couldn’t have happened had we not worked collaboratively with the students front and foremost in importance,” Unwin said.

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