After loud and clear opposition, 性视界传媒 school trustees have backtracked on a proposal to convert the district's three traditional schools to regular elementary ones.
"We quickly learned what traditional schools meant to the respondents," district principal for settlement services Raj Puri said of the consultation process with the community on the proposal.
It was at the regular October board meeting where trustees were presented with the proposal of turning 性视界传媒 Traditional, Cloverdale Traditional and McLeod Road Traditional into regular, catchment elementary schools to meet enrolment demands.
Traditional schools have a larger emphasis on educational achievement and literacy, with regular skills assessments and a dress code, usually in the form of uniforms.
At the regular Wednesday, Dec. 11 meeting, the board was informed on how the consultation process with parents and guardians, students and other community members went.
Overall, parents expressed a "strong attachment" to traditional schools and largely did not support a change into mainstream schools for their children.
Of the parents who have children in traditional schools consulted, 90 per cent were in favour of keeping uniforms for their children at the converted school. A strong parental involvement in their children's schools were also expressed as beneficial factors many respondents did not want to see a change in.
The ones consulted also indicated they felt that the decision to make traditional schools into regular catchment elementaries had already been made by the board.
"The board has never and will never believe in wasting our own, our staff鈥檚 and the public鈥檚 time in consultation that we鈥檒l ignore," said trustee Bob Holmes.
"It鈥檚 important to understand that public consultation isn鈥檛 meant to be a process where we simply tally up those in favour and those against an option or proposal and run with whatever gets the most votes. There鈥檝e been many times when the board has had to make a decision that wasn鈥檛 what most people wanted because it was really what the district needed to do to take priority."
Trustee Laurie Larsen echoed Holmes' point, noting that the public consultation did in fact "impact the board," which was seen by the result of the board vote.
A group of parents even held a delegation at the meeting, after the trustee vote, to plead their case for why traditional schools are important.
One of the parents, Pan Tiwana, shared that instead of changing the school model, open up capacity to relieve 性视界传媒 Traditional of its waitlist. According to the group's presentation, there are seven classrooms at the school that are not currently being used.
Staff recommended to the board to not follow through with the proposal to convert the traditional schools and rather keep the model as is, given the reduction in immigration targets that the federal government has set for the next three years.
The board voted unanimously 鈥� trustee Laurae McNally was absent 鈥� to keep the traditional schools in the district and not change them to regular elementaries.
