Trustees may delay Stuart Wood decision

By MEL ROTHENBURGER

NEWS/ SCHOOLS — The shutdown of Stuart Wood school might not be a done deal yet.

Closure of the historic downtown school will be on the agenda for Monday night’s school board meeting but trustees may put off a decision despite a recommendation from their superintendent that they make it official.

Board chair Denise Harper told A.M. News Thursday night she will poll her fellow trustees to see if there’s an appetite to delay the decision for at least one more meeting in view of a campaign by downtown residents to keep the school open.

The Downtown-West End Residents Association has teamed up with the Sagebrush Neighbourhood Association to fight the closure, and now the Kamloops Central Business Improvement Association is lending its support.

The building is owned by the City of Kamloops. Tuesday, Kamloops City council declined to get directly involved in lobbying to keep the school open but voted to ask trustees in a letter to meet with residents before they decide the fate of the school.

That letter, signed by Mayor Peter Milobar, landed in the school board office Thursday afternoon. Harper, who initially rejected a request from the residents’ group to appear on Monday’s board agenda because the deadline for public input ran out June 9, is now mulling it over.

“I’m having a sense that we haven’t gone far enough,” Harper said Thursday night. She said she has the impression downtown residents are “really, really, really angry and really, really, really frustrated” and “if nothing else this would be an opportunity to go over it again.”

A public meeting hosted by the downtown residents’ group Wednesday night resulted in a plan to go door-to-door to get signatures on a petition urging that Stuart Wood be kept as a school. Harper said the school presents a multitude of educational challenges, including its footprint, parking and lack of handicapped access, plus the age of the structure.

An alternate proposal to change Lloyd George elementary — currently a French immersion-only school — back to a dual-track school that would include English-only students is problematic because the current structure there is “thriving,” she said.

Harper said there seems to be a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding about the rationale for closing Stuart Wood. “I don’t want that. I really think we need to talk about this. Maybe the board does need to take a second look.”

She said she would be talking to the rest of the board about the issue but deferring the decision for a couple of weeks wouldn’t be a major problem for the district’s realignment timetable. Many of the trustees are feeling “between a rock and a hard place,” she said.

The Kamloops Central BIA issued a “to whom it may concern” letter Thursday saying the goal of increasing the residential population downtown can’t be accomplished without neighbourhood schools.

“One of the biggest factors that go into a family’s decision on where to live is the neighbourhood school, its proximity and quality,” the letter said.

“Downtowns all over North America that have traditionally beeen ‘daytime downtowns’ are reporting not having centrally located schools as their biggest hurdle in not only attracting residents but workers and large corporations as well.”