Parents plan rally to protest possible closing of Oxford School
St. Catherine's Elementary parents say they should have been consulted
Parents of children who are current or future students at Halifax's Oxford School are organizing a rally to protest the proposed closure of the school, saying they were not properly consulted.
The rally is planned for Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at Oxford School after a volunteer committee proposed closing that school—along with Highland Park Junior High—at a public meeting on June 7.
At that meeting, the committee suggested the province build a brand-new junior high school, ideally where the Bloomfield Centre stands now. If that plan were to go forward, junior high students at Oxford would be moved to the new school and elementary students would be moved to neighbouring schools.
Committee members will now finalize their draft recommendation and Halifax Regional School Board members will vote on the proposal in early July. If it is approved, the province will then have to decide whether to pay for the plan.
'No voice' for feeder school parents
Amy Gibson's children are French immersion students at St. Catherine's Elementary, which is a feeder school for Oxford's junior high. Gibson says parents at St. Catherine's should have been part of the review process, but weren't included.
Gibson told CBC's Information Morning she didn't know the future of Oxford School was at risk until after the recommendation had been made, "so our school had absolutely no voice."
The provincial school review policy says "a review should include all schools that could be impacted by the outcome," but it doesn't specifically mention the need to include feeder schools.
Growing or shrinking?
Jill Lawless, whose children attend Oxford, said the school's student population is increasing and St. Catherine's also has a growing enrolment. She believes those numbers should have been taken into consideration by the committee.
According to school board numbers, student enrolment at Oxford has decreased over the past ten years, but is projected to increase slightly over the next decade.
Enrolment at St. Catherine's has steadily increased in the past decade, but is projected to decline slightly over the next ten years.
Calculation concerns
Gibson took issue with how the school board calculates capacity, which is said to be at 50 per cent at Oxford and 57 per cent at St. Catherine's Elementary as of April 2015.
Gibson said the school board takes the number of students and divides it by the number of classrooms, which isn't an accurate number.
"They include things like staff rooms, resource rooms, and we have a communal pottery lab," she said. "Those are all included as usable classroom space.
"There's no way we could double our school population, even though that's what the utilization numbers say."
According to the province's school review policy, certain spaces are not included in capacity calculations such as the gym, visual arts rooms, music room, science lab, production lab or any classrooms repurposed for a "specialty use required by the public school program."
Cost-analysis pending
Lawless said she's concerned the school board has not done a proper cost-analysis to compare the price of renovating Oxford School with building a new junior high.
However, it would be up to the province to calculate costs, as it is ultimately responsible for paying for education infrastructure.
With files from Information Morning