To the Editor,
Re: Trustees have to make tough decisions, Letters, Feb. 5.
Finally Nanaimo-Ladysmith school district actually has a board willing to listen to the public and are doing what they were elected to do.
The 10-year facilities plan was flawed from the start. You don’t take a newer community school at capacity such as Cedar Secondary and rip it apart. You don’t take a French Immersion school such as Davis Road in Ladysmith, which was at capacity with a community built around it, and decide to bus the elementary students elsewhere. Then you certainly don’t decide to turn Cedar high school into a super-elementary school when you are told that it will be operating under capacity.
The plan merely moved bodies around without any clear thought to the implications. The choices were fiscally and morally wrong with the plan being neither in the interest of the taxpayer nor the students.
To make up the under-capacity of John Barsby, Woodlands students could have been bused there. The old school is slated to be closed anyway. Woodbank could be the new super-elementary as a fraction of the $2 million facilities budget would be required for this, freeing money for school improvements elsewhere. Many ideas were proposed by the public but were rejected by the previous board.
I take my vote very seriously and treat it as if it were a tie-breaker in an election.
Karen MullenLadysmith
To the Editor,
Congratulations are in order for the Cedar crew; a minority used the political process to gain control – brilliant.
Now, to the so-called review. Is there anyone out there who really thinks the new board will not reverse course and reopen Cedar Secondary and not close the two elementary schools, regardless of the reversal costs and ongoing costs? Right. But by all means, let’s have the review.
The board is correct, however, to link its decision on facilities to the budget because every other school will share in the extraordinary costs resulting from this 11th hour reversing of the previous board’s decision. Students at every one of those schools will be short changed next year and thereafter as a result.
Please, spare us the upcoming spin on how bad the budget is, you know, the anticipated $4 million shortfall.
I can’t wait for its response when the next School District 68 delegation for new secondary schools goes off to Victoria again pleading for funding. Good luck.
Douglas McBrideNanaimo