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Board’s decisions exacerbate problems

In order for this school district to become sustainable, capacity utilization must be addressed.

To the Editor,

Re: School closure leaves questions, Letters, Dec. 8.

We continually hear educators talk about a critical mass of students being essential to ensuring a secondary school having the ability to offer adequate and equitable educational opportunities. Comments from some board members during the consultation discussions two weeks ago clearly zeroed in on that fact as they expressed increased apprehension around John Barsby Secondary School’s predicted decreasing enrolment. Why then are those very same trustees blatantly skirting around the issue of re-opening Cedar, the closure of which originally occurred to specifically address capacity issues at that very school as well as John Barsby and Ladysmith Secondary? The truth is the board should not be talking about declining enrolment at either of those two schools when they supported re-opening a high school whose enrolment will be seriously directly affecting the other two and the district as a whole.

In order for this school district to become sustainable, capacity utilization must be addressed. Those trustees that continue to turn a blind eye to revisiting their blatantly biased decision to re-open Cedar Secondary, just shows a total lack of respect for the rest of the students and parents and in this community. Trustees are hypocritical in touting capacity issues at John Barsby and LSS in the absence of looking at that very same issue at Cedar Secondary with a predicted less than 200 student enrolment. In fact they are closing schools with higher enrolments than that (Woodlands, 595; Rutherford, 239). No wonder public confidence in this board is at an all-time low.

Barb HumphervilleNanaimo