SCI wants larger attendance area
Stayner Collegiate Institute (SCI) parents and staff voiced disappointment Tuesday night with regard to the narrow scope of a current attendance area review.
Many of the people who participated in a pupil accommodation review, either by attending public meetings or sitting on the committee, were at the Jan. 31 public meeting at SCI, which was held to seek community input on a proposal to make minor changes to attendance boundaries for SCI feeder schools.
The proposed changes, which have yet to be approved by Simcoe County District School Board trustees, would not add significant numbers to SCI’s current student population.
School board planner Andrew Keuken and superintendent Jackie Kavanagh outlined the proposal to send all elementary students who attend Nottawasaga and Creemore Public School and Clearview Meadows Elementary School to SCI, send all Nottawa students to Collingwood Collegiate Institute and give New Lowell students the choice of attending SCI or Nottawasaga Pines Secondary School, in Angus.
The goal, said Kavanagh, is to keep peer groups together, so that students from the same neighbourhoods can go to the same high school.
The review was a recommendation of the ARC, which resulted in SCI being extended to a Grade 7-12 school and the eventual closure of Byng Public School in Stayner. Clearview Meadows will take in all Stayner students JK-Grade 6.
SCI is currently at 79 per cent capacity, with 306 students and the goal of adding Grade 7 and 8 students to the mix is to improve program options at the school. By adding a projected 105 Grade 7 and 8 students, SCI’s student body would increase to 415, 107 per cent of its capacity.
People at the meeting urged the school board to consider extending the attendance area to the north, or at least making it a so-called flex zone, so people could choose either SCI or CCI.
While the school board is not looking to make large population increases to SCI at this time, parents and staff see adding students as necessary to the survival of the school, which lost students and staff to NPSS when it opened in 2011.
Throughout the accommodation review process, Stayner parents and staff consistently voiced concern that SCI was being overshadowed by both NPSS and CCI and that if Stayner’s high school were to close, it would be detrimental to the community at large.
One comment from the public, “If we lose this school, it is going to kill this community.”
“There’s something dying here and there’s brand new life. How do we feed them both?” was another.
Staff said transportation is a major factor in moving attendance boundaries and that a separate attendance area review would take place if changes were proposed to the Worsley Elementary School catchment area, in Wasaga Beach.
Trustee Annie Chandler said she strongly supports the idea of the flex zone and asked that the school board embark on a community survey to gauge interest.
Parents also voiced support for grandfathering any students affected by boundary changes so they could finish out their high school career at their current school, which is supported by the board.
“We will take all the suggestions and explore what makes sense, what’s affordable and what’s doable,” said Kavanagh.
School board staff said they are hoping for $8 million in funding to consolidate the schools but the application to the Ministry of Education was denied in its first try but another business plan has been submitted in a second round of funding.
Kavanagh said there was a focus on growth schools in the last funding round but they are hoping there will be money for consolidation schools this time around.
Comment by e-mail to akeuken@scdsb.on.ca. The deadline is Feb. 10. A staff recommendation will go to the Business and Facilities Standing Committee and then on to trustees in March 1.
