School is necessary to maintain vibrant community

LETTER — To: The Board of School Trustees – School District 73
From: The Downtown and West End Residents Association
Re: Proposed closure of Stuart Wood School
June 8, 2014

Further to our recent communications about our deep concern over the proposed closure of Stuart Wood School, we ask you to consider working with our group to seek sources of funding for the necessary upgrades to the building which would be required to keep Stuart Wood a functioning school.

As we previously indicated to you, we are deeply committed to having a community school in the downtown area. In fact, this is the most important issue for our group representing the residents of this area. If Stuart Wood were to close, there would be no community school in the entire downtown area of Kamloops.

We strongly believe that a community school is necessary to maintain a vibrant community and to attract new families to this area. It is a established goal of Kamloops to create and maintain a thriving downtown area – a community school is a key element of this. We feel that keeping Stuart Wood functioning would be a key factor in increasing density downtown and in developing a sustainable and healthy environment.

We do understand that upgrades to the building would be required, and that the Board has limited ability to raise the necessary funding. We ask you to consider working with the City of Kamloops, and both heritage and community funding sources to secure that funding. We would expect a commitment from the Board to continue operating the school should the funding be secured.

We regret that the Board will likely decide on Stuart Wood before we have an opportunity to meet but do ask that, if you proceed with this decision, you leave the door open to reconsider if funding could be raised. We sincerely hope that the Board appreciate our view and would be willing to work with us to keep Stuart Wood operational.

Should the necessary funding not appear, we then strongly request that the Board give serious consideration to re-configuring Lloyd George school as a dual-language community school.

This is a more community supportive solution than requiring families with young children living in our downtown community to drive their children to Sahali for basic schooling. We believe the school district needs to offer more than only special interest schools to families in the downtown core.

The closing of bilingual schools was extremely controversial during last school district reconfiguration. It would be most preferable to North Shore francophone families to have a closer location for their children’s school.

We believe the most important factor at issue for our neighbourhood is having a downtown community school. While our definite preference is for the continued operation of Stuart Wood, we consider Lloyd George to be “downtown” as opposed to Beattie Elementary in Sahali.

We look forward to the Downtown West End Residents Association, City of Kamloops and you, the Board, working together for quality public education.

Regards,
Denis Walsh
Chair, Downtown-West End Residents Association