The Board of Education of School Board 69 (Qualicum) chose to postpone any school facility decisions until the spring of 2012.
“In an attempt to be open and transparent with our community,” Trustee Jane Williams said during Tuesday’s meeting, they “arranged a presentation of a draft facilities review.”
The initial presentation on October 2, 2010 was about the background information, enrolment forecasts and the difficulties declining enrolment was causing. While it was intended to be about sharing information, Williams said, it presented scenarios including the possibility of school closures.
She said while the public response was understandably focused on the school closure issue, the uproar it caused was, “the opposite result to what the board had intended.”
While the board considered the Matrix Planning Associates’ report over the last few months, she said they realized, “it would have been more productive to first present last fall the problems we are facing with enrolment and our facilities — no scenarios or options — and then to have worked with staff, schools and the community on input about possible solutions.”
Superintendent Candice Morgan, in a separate item, gave an interim report on the facilities planning and said they got a lot of feedback, some concern over the process, but mostly concern for Kwalikum Secondary, which all three recommended options suggested closing.
The board extended the timeline for possible decisions a couple times, most recently saying they wouldn’t make a decision until fall 2011 but they were asked to delay until after the trustee elections in November.
Williams said trustees have come to believe that taking more time to hear from the community and to get more information would be useful.
She introduced a motion to “defer any decision on potential school closures until spring of 2012,” which passed unanimously to applause from the full audience.
“We’re happy they are confirming what they have already said,” said Gaylan Chequer, chair of the Keep KSS Steering Committee of the Oceanside Communities for Quality Education (OCQE), of delaying the decision.
“This gives us time to make it an election issue, and it buys time to look at the larger issues.”
She said they have been talking about running candidates for trustee from their group, but nothing formal yet.
“This is a positive step forward although one I think was inevitable in light of all the questions surrounding the Matrix Report,” added Lynette Kershaw, also with OCQE.
“In short order we are going to have a new superintendent, perhaps a new assistant super, new trustees, new census, and perhaps new vision at the provincial level. Postponing a decision on closing one of our schools and changing the grade configuration at all others was the only decision to make.”
In her report Morgan pointed out that they, “heard a number of times that (the controversy) was not all bad,” creating a lot of engagement and discussion in the community between a wide array of groups.
She said they have not only heard criticism, but a lot of positive ideas on how to move forward.
She also pointed out there were other recommendations of possible school reconfigurations in the Matrix report that got almost no attention or discussion that still need to be addressed.
Morgan had six recommendations, including commencing a community dialogue in May, continuing to focus on career education and dual credit programs and undertaking a number reviews of areas like the international student program. All of the recommendations were also passed unanimously by the board.
Kershaw said she was worried about the restrictive wording of the recommendations and that only two of them specifically mention public dialogue, which she hopes the board will expand to “looking at all options and fully inclusive of our community in an open and transparent manner.”
writer@pqbnews.com
